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Jesus, The Compassion of God
By Monika K. Hellwig
Wilmington. Michael Glazier, 1983. 159 pp. $12.95, $6.95 paper.

Traditional theology has often tended to see its task as that of deducing theological statements from the established affirmations of the Bible and the creeds of the church. The formulations of the past, however, particularly of a past that may now be 1500-2000 years distant, do not always address the issues that confront later generations, nor do their words always resonate in the same way. In order to speak clearly and meaningfully to its own time, theology must be faithful not only to its distant heritage, but also to the experiences and insights of its immediate context. On the other hand, a contemporized theology runs the risk of simply fitting the Gospel into its own categories and using it as an accomplice in its own agenda, as both evolutionary and revolutionary theologies have inclined to do.

Mindful of this, Monika Hellwig has approached the Christological question from the standpoint of the interpretation of Christian experiences of Jesus, past and present. She offers a condensation of much of the rethinking of Christology that has characterized recent decades of New Testament scholarship and theological reformulation, developed into a coherent and balanced position. Almost half of the book deals with problems in Christology, Such as "semantic drift." Even the attempt to preserve the classical statements of the New Testament and early church must come to terms with the problem of shifting meanings, as in the case of the term person in Trinitarian usage. Equally common is the

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problem of "metaphorical drift," both in the sense that metaphors no longer convey the same connotations and energies in new cultural contexts, and in the sense that metaphors tend to shift from being analogical expressions to literal statements of fact. These are certainly major problems in the popular understandings of what the church is affirming about Jesus.

Hellwig evidences a strong sense of tradition and historical continuity with early, Christians in her attempt at constructing a contemporary Christology. Agreeing with Karl Rahner that a formulation, such as that of Chalcedon, is not the end of Christological reflection, she also adds that "it is a marker along the way which serves as one, though not the only, criterion of orthodoxy, Scripture and liturgy being more important and more comprehensive but also more diffuse and elusive criteria of orthodoxy" (p. 61). We must not set in stone or literalize the images and metaphors by which the biblical authors and early church leaders sought to express their experiences of Jesus but, respectful of these and aided and informed by these, move on to re-expressing our own experiences of Jesus.

In developing a contemporary Christology, Hellwig evidences special sympathies for liberation theologies, for surely Jesus' own sympathies were for the poor, the meek, the disinherited, the outcast. Yet liberation theologies tend to reduce Jesus' ministry and import to these dimensions, to turn him into a social and political revolutionary, and to identify him with a particular socio-political ideology (usually Marxism). The constructive section of the book mediates between traditional Christological discussions, which can too easily abstract themselves from the profound needs and injustices of the day-and therefore indirectly ratify rather than challenge the status quo-and the demand for a theology that is fully transforming and liberating. Jesus, in fact, seems to have stood in a similar position in his own time, certainly appearing to the Jewish and Roman establishment as some sort of revolutionary, like the Zealots, and yet not an insurrectionist either-an enigma to the establishment and the revolutionary alike.

The book concludes with a section on "Christ in a Pluralistic World," which briefly compares and contrasts Jesus with Buddha, Muhammad, Gandhi, and Marx. The half-dozen pages devoted to each is hardly adequate to the enormous issues involved, and there is little reference to the more substantial efforts at exploring such relationships. But, for those who have not given much thought in these directions, these chapters may serve as a springboard for further reflection.

Rather surprisingly, the feminist form of liberation theology is completely ignored, not only as a contemporary instance of liberation theology but also as it bears upon the discussion of patriarchal language, proposals for de-masculinizing Trinitarian imagery, and attempts at neutering references to Jesus in Scripture and liturgy. Whatever the position on these issues, one would expect that a contemporary Christo-

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logical formulation would take these concerns into account and address them in some way.

Conrad Hyers
Gustavus Adolphus College
St. Peter, Minnesota