593 - Faith Encounters Ideology: Christian Discernment and Social Change

Faith Encounters Ideology: Christian Discernment and Social Change

By Douglas J. Elwood

Quezon City, Philippines, New Day Publishers, 1985. 320 Pp. $16.00.

The special value of this book is the context in which it was written. It is not a work about the Philippines for theological tourists, but a contribution to critical reflection in the Philippines about problems of faith and action that concern Christians everywhere. Two basic and related issues are explored: the interaction of faith with social ideologies, especially Marxism, in guiding the social practice of Christians, and the question of violent versus nonviolent action for social change.

To this exploration, the author brings a world-wide perspective, as he is well equipped to do. An American scholar, trained in Europe, he has spent the past twenty-one years in Taiwan and the Philippines, and has played a significant role both as writer and editor in the development of Asian theology. He deftly weaves major European and American sources on Marxism, social systems, theology, ethics, and the violence controversy together with world-wide ecumenical studies and the specific insights of Asian-especially Philippine-theologians, both Catholic and Protestant. The book may well be unique in this combination of scholarship. It is a survey, designed for the Philippines, but useful almost anywhere to people who live with these choices and these problems.

That is so, however, only if one does not forget the human context. The author has partners in dialogue. He identifies them poignantly in his dedication: "For my former students at (Philippine theological schools) some of whom, in their passionate concern for social justice, are or have been attracted to Marxist ideology and/or tempted to advocate revolutionary violence in order to fulfill their vision of a better society." Elwood is a moderate, a believer in creative nonviolence, in the transcendence of divine judgement and grace over all ideologies, necessary as these are, and in the reconciling saving work of Christ beyond all struggles for liberation, important as these also are in their time. His debate is primarily with the Christian left, with liberation theology, whose value and limits he delicately expounds, and with Christian Marxists of the Latin American and Filipino types whose illusions and temptations he carefully exposes. He sets forth the relativities and ambivalences of the debate about a just economic order and the

 

594 - Faith Encounters Ideology: Christian Discernment and Social Change

ideologies that are at work there. He examines the critical discussion about nonviolent social change from the interpretations of Jesus' ministry to the moral influence philosophy of Gandhi and Martin Luther King, Jr., and the pragmatic methodology of Gene Sharp. He tries to help his readers-tempted to surrender to the totalitarian certainty of a " science" of change, or to the absolute hope of a violent solution to all injustice-to live in a real, ambivalent world by faith, love, and hope rooted in God's work in Christ.

Christian moderation is the strength of this book; it is also its weakness. The reader is brought back to relativity in thought and action, but is left there with too little guidance. The ground is cleared, but policy is not proposed. A theological style-of participation in the struggle for social transformation with faith that relativizes and humanizes ideologies, and with love that expresses itself in nonviolent action-is proposed. Too little, however, is said about hard choices concerning political and economic power and its redistribution, about counter violence, and about particular realistic hopes. Members of the Aquino government should read this volume for orientation. So should others of us around the world. But for guidance in policy, more is needed, a form of prophecy which knows about the judgment of God on human absolutisms of thought and action, but also about the command of God to do justice and love mercy in concrete ways. Perhaps the fall of Marcos will clear the way for the author to write another book.

CHARLES C. WEST

Princeton Theological Seminary
Princeton, New Jersey