386 - Images of Man: Studies in Religion and Anthropology

Images of Man: Studies in Religion and Anthropology
Edited by J. William Angell and E. Pendleton Banks
Macon, Mercer University Press, 1984. 136 pp. $13.95.

The Luce Program on Religion and the Social Crisis, out of which this volume comes, arose from a concern "that our society is in radical crisis because, among other reasons, the various academic disciplines have fragmented into isolated specialties." To address this crisis, members of

387 - Images of Man: Studies in Religion and Anthropology

the Department of Religion at Wake Forest University received funding for a project to bring scholars of various disciplines together for dialogue "to foster both mutual understanding and criticism." Over the period 1981-84, six series of lectures by distinguished visiting scholars were sponsored by the Luce Program. The lectures are to be published in a series of volumes, of which Images of Man is the first to appear.

The intent of the essays collected in this first volume is "to present a variety of views concerning the nature and condition of mankind as determined by the disciplines of theology and anthropology with the hope that a contribution may be made toward understanding and solving the human crises of our time." Each of the authors was asked to examine images of human being, nature, and the supernatural in the traditions with which he (all the contributors are men) is most familiar. But only one of the essays directly addresses the topic, Melford E. Spiro's "Images of Man, Nature, and the Supernatural in the Buddhist Schema of Salvation." The others constitute a potpourri of topics more or less related to the issue at hand. Anthropologist Robert F. Spencer of the University of Minnesota suggests that the distinctiveness of Islam lies not so much in its theological conceptions as in "the design for living that the Qur an and its commentaries present." He attributes the present disorder in the house of Islam to difficulties that arise in the encounter of Islam in its various local national forms with the modern West.

388 - Images of Man: Studies in Religion and Anthropology

Vanderbilt theologian Edward Farley examines three aspects of the Christian view of human being-human being as soul, as sinful, and as having universal character-to show how contemporary anthropological theories should both reshape contemporary Christian expressions of human being as well as be critiqued by those expressions. James. L. Peacock, an anthropologist from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, asks "what is the actual, and what might be an ideal, relation of life to religion? What might anthropology contribute to answering this question?" He answers that anthropology contributes a wholistic perspective to the understanding of human being, a perspective that he also sees in the concerns of many private religious groups in the United States.

Theologians Theodore Runyon of Candler School of Theology and Harvey G. Cox of Harvard Divinity School contribute essays that only indirectly relate to the volumes theme. Runyon parallels the Exilic attempt to come to terms with Babylonian cosmology with the presentday Christian task of coming to grips with current scientific cosmology. Just as the Exilic Jews accepted in large part the cosmology of Babylonia so as "to advance the basic Hebrew understanding of the ultimate nature of things," so are contemporary Christians "to take the descriptions most in accord with the scientific data of our time and put those descriptions into the ultimate framework of our covenant with God." Cox in his essay (which also appears as the Introduction to his new book Religion in the Secular City) argues that the resources for postmodern theology will come from "the edges" of Christianity-political fundamentalism on the right and Christian base communities on the left.

The goals of the Luce program are admirable, for few would disagree that academic specialization has created an intellectual fragmentation that is related to our social crisis. This volumes attempt to create a situation of dialogue between anthropologists and theologians should therefore be applauded. But the dialogue-the conversation between scholars-is not itself represented. Instead, we have a very diverse collection of essays that, in the context of the ongoing interdisciplinary course in which they were originally presented, served as initiators of dialogue. The editors attempt to bring unity to the collection by their introductory and concluding essays, but they cannot preserve for us the creative process of dialogue that surely arose in the discussion that followed the lectures. Nonetheless, for those interested in initiating their own dialogues on these issues, these essays will serve as a helpful beginning.

C. David Grant
Texas Christian University
Fort Worth, Texas