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Metaphors for the Contemporary Church
By Susan Brooks Thistlethwaite
New York, Pilgrim, 1983. 177 pp. $8.95.

The title does not reveal the comprehensiveness and richness of this book. It is not only a book about the church, but a small enchiridion of Christology, social ethics, and feminist theology. Thistlethwaite, an assistant professor of theology and culture at Chicago Theological Seminary, brings the insights from feminist, liberationist, and linguistic analysis to theological reflection on Christ and the church. She underscores the significance of metaphors for the church's self-understanding by arguing that some metaphors express an exclusive self-understanding, whereas other metaphors are inclusive of minorities. Women's experience provides the key for an inclusive understanding of the church and for an inclusive appropriation of the metaphors of New Creation, the Kingdom of God, the Body of Christ, the Poor, and the Mother Church.

After a brief prelude on method and a short survey of the history of the relationship between women and metaphor in the theological tradition, Thistlethwaite proceeds to reinterpret these key metaphors for the contemporary Church. The metaphor of the body of Christ taken together with that of the poor become the metaphors for the church. The kingdom of God provides the stance to criticize the failures of the institutional church in regard to justice. The metaphor of the poor should be applied to the church's structures. The author's discussion of Christology in connection with the body of Christ metaphor brings to the fore a praxis approach to Christology that discerns the difference between inclusive and exclusive Christologies. Those that exclude some

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or favor others subvert the metaphor because they divide and split the body of Christ. A similar approach is taken toward pneumatology and the doctrine of the Trinity. God's Spirit brings forth justice and overcomes subordination and passivity. Finally, a postscript on power, authority, and hierarchy draws out the concrete applications of the themes of liberation so carefully intertwined in the discussions on the root metaphors of the Christian community.

The volume has several distinct advantages. Thistlethwaite's chapters cover a wide range of feminist literature, and she writes with an unparalleled clarity. She not only writes well, but writes with a passion for justice and liberation that is inspiring. Metaphors for the Contemporary Church is, therefore, an excellent handbook for classroom and adult education discussion. Not everyone will agree with Thistlethwaite's claims and arguments. But all will be challenged to rethink their understanding and praxis of basic metaphors. If I had one criticism of the book, it would be that at times her argument moves so quickly that I would have preferred that she pause, perhaps to nuance her survey, especially of medieval and traditional theology, or to modify the claim of her argument. For example, she dismisses in one paragraph Rawls's theory of justice as fairness. Granted much is indeed controversial about Rawls's theory. Nevertheless, the attempt to relate biblical metaphors to the contemporary world needs to think through more carefully those philosophical and ethical constructions of justice that have been elaborated within our pluralistic society.

Francis Schussler Fiorenza
The Catholic University of America
Washington, D.C.