252 - Relatedness: Essays in Metaphysics and Theology

Relatedness: Essays in Metaphysics and Theology
By Harold H. Oliver
Macon, Mercer, 1984. 178 pp. $14.50.

Professor of New Testament and Theology at Boston University, the author has written a text that is not light reading. He has a number of basic metaphysical convictions. These he articulated in a volume published in 1981 (A Relational Metaphysics, The Hague, Nijhoff). Here he does not fail to explain them again for the benefit of readers who are unfamiliar with his thought.

In his view, the most fundamental category for grasping reality is relation. What a human being experiences is just that-relations. The objects and subjects that are related (the relata) are derivatives and abstractions. Both subject and object are, therefore, features derived from experience. Such a position is said to avoid the exaggerations of both idealism and realism while preserving the partial truth contained in each. But this book is by no means a mere repetition of metaphysical positions the author has already made public elsewhere. He is concerned to show his readers what contributions his ontology can make to the resolution of important theological debates.

He contends, for example, that if one holds to a relational metaphysics, cosmology and theology are complementary rather than at odds with each other or compartmentalized as disciplines. Nor are the implications of seeing reality as relatedness missed when it comes to time. The future has no reality but is present anticipation. This emptying of the future is said to involve a fullness of futurity or hope. Correspondingly, the

253 - Relatedness: Essays in Metaphysics and Theology

"pastness" that is experienced in the present (the "memoriter mode of Immediacy") is mistakenly thought of as a thing in its own right. Then that "pastness" becomes "the Past" or an object no longer available experientially. For one viewing reality from this same ontological perspective, God is the Eminent Other rather than the Totally Other.

The author is concerned with the hermeneutics of religious texts. He treats myth in a number of essays contained in this book. He thinks the real intentionality of myth has been misunderstood when rationalists keep asking what realities lie behind its imagery. Bultmann comes in for his share of the blame for the widespread idea that truth and myth are at odds. The real importance of myth is to image the relatedness of all reality. The story of Jonah in the Hebrew Scriptures as well as Luke-Acts in the New Testament show this well.

This book deals with metaphysics and with the hermeneutics of biblical narrative. The subjects chosen are challenging enough in their own right. At times the author has made reading more difficult than it need have been. For instance, the affirmations of relatedness made by Judaism and Christianity (including the incarnation) are said to be but culturally different versions of the same ontological assertion. This reader could have profited from more explanation than was given. A second example is found in the way the author deals with David F. Strauss and his Life of Jesus. Albert Schweitzer is said to have failed to give Strauss the full credit he deserved for understanding that myth is not to be read referentially, that is, by reconstructing the historical events behind the mythical narrative. The author knows many scholars have indeed read myth referentially. He, of course, is concerned to read it relationally, that is, to see it as intending to present relations between the "relata" it depicts. This is clearly a different option. But why it is so preferable could have been made clearer.

Finally, the author contends that relational metaphysics can serve as a new paradigm for theology. This would imply that everything would be regarded as a function of everything else. This reviewer remained, at the very least, hesitant about what such a metaphysics would imply with regard to the transcendent God of both Judaism and Christianity.

Carl J. Peter
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.