124 - Types of Christian Theology

Types of Christian Theology
By Hans W. Frei
Edited by George Hunsinger and William C Placher
New Haven, Yale University Press, 1992. 180 pp. $26.50.

This typology of modern Christian theology appears thanks to the ardent editorial efforts of two of Hans Frei's students. In the wake of

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his untimely death in 1988, they painstakingly "spliced together" three series of public lectures that outlined the major study in modern Western christology Frei had hoped to write. Related writings are included in three appendices. The last of these, although taking the humble form of a book review, is probably the most discerning essay on Karl Barth's life and thought available.

Frei's five-foId typology categorizes Christian theologies according to their reliance on philosophical structures of meaning and on communal Christian discourse. At one end of the spectrum, theology is conceived of as "one discipline in an academic class of disciplines," sharing with them general criteria of intelligibility, coherence, and truth. This type 1 theology, which pledges no allegiance to the norms of self-description of the Christian community, is best exemplified in the contemporary period by Gordon Kaufman. At the other end of the spectrum, type 5 theologians, such as D. Z. Phillips, claim to subsume theology entirely under the particular semiotic system of the Christian faith. Frei, however, criticizes their pretensions to philosophical abstinence and notes some peculiar convergences with the first type. In the middle of the spectrum, are three types which correlate general conceptual structures and Christian self-description in an increasingly unsystematic way. In type 2, Christian symbols function exhaustively as instruments to disclose our preconceptual religious experience and to open up new possibilities for living authentically. This type of theology is best represented by the earlier work of David Tracy. In a move that will surprise many students of modern Christian thought, Frei places Schleiermacher in type 3, at the middle of the spectrum, arguing that he attempted a balanced correlation between Christian self-description and theology as an academic discipline. Karl Barth, the hero of the story, occupies type 4, in his insistence that internal Christian self-description have priority over external conceptualizations of theology, whether philosophical or historical.

In the background of this typology, and occasionally in the foreground, is Frei's conviction about the importance of the "literal sense" of Scripture, which he developed in an earlier book, The Eclipse of Biblical Narrative. Frei is adamant about distinguishing this hermeneutical reading of the gospels, in which the Jesus of the text is the ascriptive subject of his acts, from the question of extra-textual referent, finding surprising Christian consensus on the former and little on the latter. He is right to make this distinction, and yet the two seem inextricably related.

The "identity of Jesus Christ," which was so much the focus of Frei's personal and professional life, is a dynamic, living identity. It is uniquely rendered through the gospel narratives because, in Frei's words, Jesus Christ "identifies himself to us in them." Frei's elliptical remarks to the contrary, the literal sense of Scripture does not seem easily compatible with views that construe the extra-textual Jesus as

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either purely fictional or as a metaphysical abstraction. The "textual Jesus" Frei so powerfully elucidates seems to demand both a historical referent that is not in bondage to the "regulatory agency" of higher criticism and an experiential referent rooted in the life and worship of the church. Frei's typology drives the reader towards this conclusion. In so doing, it is more "apologetic" than Frei liked to admit.

This book is a bold theological manifesto on why the church must be the primary context for doing theology-yet it is not one many churchgoers could make sense of. Addressed primarily to academics interested in high-culture European theology, it should stimulate much conversation in these circles across the theological spectrum. And for those of us who knew Hans Frei, whether as students or colleagues, this volume brings wistful reminders of the person he was-his wry sense of humor, his self-deprecating way of conveying his vast learning and insight, his "simple and delighted generosity."

Amy Plantinga Pauw
Louisville Presbyterian Seminary
Louisville, KY