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The Quest for the Post-Historical Jesus
By William Hamilton
Continuum Books, 1994, 304 pp. $27.50.

The question that provoked this daring and provocative foray into the modern image and meaning of Jesus is this: If christology is at a dead-end, if modern historical scholarship gives us a Jesus of history who is unknowable and a Christ of faith who is irrelevant, then what are we to do with Jesus?

William Hamilton, best known for his leadership role in the 1960s "death of God" movement, offers in this remarkable work of theology-asliterary criticism an analysis of various Jesus fictions that modern writers and poets have constructed out of the resource of the post-historical imagination. While Hamilton's literary insights are crisp and originaloften amusing, sometimes outright funny, and more often than not devastatingly sharp-the audience to which this book will appeal will necessarily include those students of modern theology interested in Hamilton's articulation of his own understanding of radical theology. For in this book, as in previous ones, stretching back to the now classic Radical Theology and the Death of God (1966), which he co-authored with Thomas J. J. Altizer, Hamilton shows that he will not-cannot-jettison Jesus. Hamilton doesn't allow Jesus to fill the void left by God's death, nor does he want God to benefit as a repository of faith in light of all we cannot possibly know about the elusive Jesus. We are left with fictions about Jesus, which includes the Gospels, since fictions are what modern historical scholarship has bequeathed to us. In the post-historical period, these fictions, as they come to us from novelists, playwrights, poets, journalists, and filmmakers, are our means of access to Jesus-they are, like the Gospels themselves, guideposts or ideological portraits designed to "meet need, to stimulate imagination, intelligence and action." As Hamilton will conclude later in a discussion about the Japanese writer Shusaku Endo, "We make Jesus as our needs require, and in turn we may become-if we are lucky-like the Jesuses we make."

There you have it. The analytical aspect of the work-Jesus fictions reveal who we are; and the constructive aspect-we become the Jesus we make. Hamilton continues to move in that peculiar theological space where God is absent, seeking "a place to stand beyond belief," as he says, which is a place where domination politics are eschewed, where forgiveness is valued as a tool to help repair the inevitable tears in human relationships. That place to stand turns out, curiously enough, to be a place to stroll. For Hamilton concludes the book by offering his own fiction: a walk on the beach with a stranger whose intrusion is neither invited nor spurned. The stranger offers company and conversation for an hour, which is time sufficient to untangle some theological confusions, clarify some misunderstandings, and lay the ground work for moving ahead "troubled and moved, but not afraid."

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The theological context for this book is part and parcel of the literary analyses that appear within it, but the literary analyses are worthy of attention in themselves. Hamilton investigates the construction of a political Jesus, revisiting Bonhoeffer and exposing the radical theologies of Graham Shaw and Jens Glebe-Moller. Hamilton argues-convincingly I think-that those who construct political Jesuses do so to vindicate their own politics, so that searching for the political Jesus is finally as "fruitless" as quests for the historical Jesus. When Hamilton moves into the nineteenth century to examine the "christologies" of Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, Harriet Beecher Stowe, and Emily Dickinson, he shows that each author constructed a Jesus who met special needs. In Stowe's case, it was the need for a feminine Jesus, in Dickinson's, a Jesus who, unwilling to participate in God's cruelty, becomes absent, inaccessible. Hamilton's examination of the post-historical Jesuses, produced by the likes of Sholem Asch, Jim Bishop, Anthony Burgess, Francois Mauriac, D. H. Lawrence, Barbara O'Brien, Robert Pinsky-just to name a few of those treated-is inviting, lively, and finally illuminating. For Hamilton, as guide to the Jesus genre, presents himself as skilled critic and deft analyst. (Engaged with literature since the beginning of his career, Hamilton has in the last twenty years focused a great deal of attention-numerous articles and several books-on Herman Melville.) Hamilton has developed into a first-rate literary critic, thoroughly capable of extracting depth theologies out of non-traditional theological sources (fiction, poetry, film, and plays). And he has great fun doing it, which is communicated by his own wit and sense of play. Hamilton himself is a gifted stylist, and the reader of this book will, I promise, enjoy a delightful excursion through some marvelously crafted and opinionated prose.

Hamilton's critical work on Mrs. Stowe or Emily Dickinson is worthy of scholarly engagement whether or not one accepts Hamilton's own starting point (or is it an end point?), namely, the death of God, which serves as a hermeneutical pry to open much modern fiction, poetry, and film. That hermeneutic, admittedly, is inextricably tied to Hamilton's on-going project in radical theology, which is certainly controversial but grounded in cultural sensibilities of much broader reach than we might have realized before this book. Hamilton continues to affirm the usefulness of a death of God hermeneutic, but he does not clearly propose questing for a Jesus who can do little else than receive our projections. Were that the issue, then what would be at stake is to make sure that those who choose to cling to Jesus cling to a good one. And, at a minimum, that would mean that Jesus should be kept from serving as an instrument of religious domination and control. (Hamilton is sympathetic to Graham Shaw, who makes such a point.)

But this book is a scholarly enterprise offering literary analysis and cultural critique rather than a tendentious exposé of radical theology. Hamilton's book will doubtless fail to provide a secure or welcome hook on which those still ensconced in the certainty of classical theism can hang their hats. With greater certainty one can say that the book contributes

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significantly to our understanding of the meaning of Jesus in the posthistorical era. What comes through the book-and even traditional Christian believers who disagree with Hamilton ought to contend with this-is an unmistakable honesty and grace. I have reread several times Hamilton's little fiction at the book's conclusion, that walk on the beach that the narrator (Hamilton) takes with the uninvited stranger (Jesus). And the more I read it, the less I wonder why that stranger should have picked that particular narrator to interrupt for conversation. After a while, it is no longer clear who is gleaning insight from whom, for this is real conversation-friendly, reciprocal, respectful, even intimate. And thinking about that I am led to wonder, who is enjoying it the most? And who is really more interested in whom?

Lloyd H. Steffen
Lehigh University
Bethlehem, PA