442 - God in History: Shapes of Freedom

God in History: Shapes of Freedom
By Peter C. Hodgson
Nashville, Abingdon Press, 1989. 287 pp. $21.95.

The mythos of salvation history, with its logic of triumph and causality, its distinction of planes (profane and sacred), its special sequence of events, its linear teleology, and its supernatural, other-worldly eschatology must be allowed to die out in order to enable the enduring conviction that God acts redemptively in history to be reborn in a theology of the history of freedom.... [I]m the late twentieth century we are now entering upon a new phase of this history, filled with both unprecedented possibilities and enormous dangers.

This is the vision that pervades Peter Hodgson's brilliant new book on God in History: Shapes of Freedom. In working out what he calls a " revisionist' theological response to the challenge of postmodernism," Hodgson, Professor of Theology in Vanderbilt Divinity School, has produced one of the few truly original theological reconceptions of Christian faith to have appeared in many years. The book addresses the profoundly difficult issues about God and about history posed by contemporary deconstructionists, on the one hand, and contemporary liberation theologians, on the other-taking into account insights and perspectives provided by such diverse figures as Hayden White, Karl Barth, Richard Bernstein, Jò rgen Habermas, John Cobb, Paul Ricoeur, William Desmond, Karl Jaspers, and many others. Hodgson has devoted years of study to Hegel, especially his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion (of which be is a principal translator and editor). It is not surprising, therefore, that it is in Hegel's work-especially as read by his "left-wing" followers and modified and opened up by Ernst Troeltsch's understanding of religious and cultural pluralism-that Hodgson finds insights and concepts on the basis of which he is able to develop a suggestive and illuminating conception of God-and-history in complex mutual interconnection with each other, a conception that enables him to draw together into a well-wrought coherent synthesis themes from an extraordinarily wide range of contemporary voices.

For many years, Hegel has received a bad press on the American scene. Consequently, the possibilities inherent in his work for addressing

443 - God in History: Shapes of Freedom

major contemporary theological problems have been almost unknown in this country-although recently he has been increasingly studied in theological as well as philosophical circles. Unlike his contemporary, Schleiermacher (much better known in this country), who proposed an essentially a-historical structuralist solution ("absolute dependence") to the problems modernity posed for the Christian understanding of God and God's relation to humanity and the world, Hegel radicalized Christian thinking about God's "mighty acts" in history. He replaced the traditional idea of an utterly transcendent God, acting on the world from "outside" it, with a new trinitarian conception of God's inextricable involvement in the unfolding historical process that constitutes both the world and human existence. Hodgson draws on this basic pattern as he attempts to address, on the one side, the deconstructionist claim that history is ultimately meaningless, being simply a human linguistic fabrication, and, on the other side, the liberationist conviction that precisely because human existence is ineradicably historical and pluralistic all forms of oppression and totalism must be resisted and overcome.

It is impossible in this short review to do justice to the richness of Hodgson's theohistorical vision and its power to address and illuminate some of the most intractable of twentieth century humanity's intellectual and socio-cultural problems. A few quotations, however, may give some sense of his leading proposals:

I am arguing that "God" and "history" are correlative, co-constitutive categories. God is self-actualized in and through historical process, and history is shaped by a gestalt that transcends it. (191)

God is efficaciously present in the world, not as an individual agent performing observable acts, nor as a uniform inspiration or lure, nor as an abstact ideal.... Rather, God is present in specific shapes or patterns of praxis that have a configuring, transformative power within historical process.... [The notion of a] shape or gestalt ... connotes something dynamic, specific, and structuring, but it avoids potentially misleading personifications of God's action (205). The gestalt of loving freedom, which is the very figure of God, must take shape in concrete historical praxis. Otherwise, it would remain an abstract ideal.... (195)

[T]here is no triumphal march of God in history, no special history of salvation, but only a plurality of partial, fragmentary, ambiguous histories of freedom (233).

[O]ur [human] responsibility is to work for the enhancement and expansion of freedom-a building up and integration of the various shapes of freedom into a more inclusive, multifaceted, wholesome matrix of communicative action and cultural practices ... a continuing transformation of the privileged and a continuing liberation of the oppressed (234).

History is a process of victories and defeats, of configurations and deconfigurations; yet it is empowered and lured onward by a transfiguring practical ideal, a gestalt of freedom, the image of a communion of solidarity, love, mutuality of recognition, and undistorted communication....

[H]istorical process may be understood as a dialectic of two interacting factors: ideal and real, possible and actual, universal and particular, transcendent and immanent, divine and human.... What we have is not a distinction of planes, one superhistorical and the other historical, but a single plane-the fabric of history-made up of distinctive though interwoven threads (193-5).

444 - God in History: Shapes of Freedom

The value of Hodgson's book is not to be found only in its important constructive theological proposals. Almost as important as these is his persuasive and illuminating reading of Hegel and his ability to show Hegel's significance for the address of major contemporary theological issues. Hegel will loom increasingly large, in my opinion, in theological discussions in the next years, and Hodgson's work, as translator, interpreter, and constructive theologian will prove a major force in helping to bring that about. Those who desire a solid and intellectually exciting introduction to Hegel's significance for contemporary theological issues could do no better than spend some time with this book.

Gordon D. Kaufman
Harvard Divinity School
Cambridge, Massachusetts