Reviewed Elsewhere [Vol. 2, #38]
Powell’s Books Reviews
Harvey Cox’s THE FUTURE OF FAITH
http://www.powells.com/review/2009_09_12.html
In book after book, Harvard University’s Harvey Cox has proven himself one of the most astute observers of contemporary religious life. From The Secular City to Fire from Heaven, from Feast of Fools to The Silencing of Leonardo Boff, Cox has persuasively demonstrated depth of knowledge, acquaintance with relevant texts and movements, and an overall inspiring level of both passion and compassion for the peoples of the world and their journeys through the landscape of belief. In his new book, The Future of Faith, Cox takes his wisdom and commitment one step further, painting an engaging and convincing portrait of a Christianity on the verge of something utterly new, completely transformative, and thoroughly grounded in the very best that 2,000 years of the religion has to offer.
Cox’s thesis, in short, is that there have been three great ages in the history of Christianity. The first of these, which he calls the Age of Faith, roughly corresponds to the early days of the Christian movement, when followers were less concerned with doctrinal orthodoxy than with living out the great message of liberation and transformation of Jesus of Nazareth. This was a radical and exciting time in the history of the church, the time of martyrs and great theologians, and a period when people of very different ways of practicing Jesus’ message coexisted in a broad and diffuse movement. In Cox’s words, “as the Christian movement entered the second century, it continued to thrive, sometimes in the face of severe persecution, with a polyglot of theologies and numerous different styles of governance.”
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Read the full review:
http://www.powells.com/review/2009_09_12.html
The Future of Faith
Harvey Cox.
Hardback: HarperOne, 2009
Buy now: [ Amazon ]
John Caputo Reviews THE MONSTROSITY OF CHRIST
by Slavoj Žižek and John Milbank
http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=17605
Materialism just isn’t what it used to be. Nowadays everyone wants to be a materialist, even the theologians, while the materialists want to look like they lead a spiritual life. The battle that is joined today is no longer between materialism and idealism, or hard-nosed Newtonians and far out spirit-seers, but between “materialist materialism” and “theological materialism”, between crude soulless materialism and materialism with spirit, a materialism of the spirit, a religious materialism (93). “Materialist materialism is simply not as materialist as theological materialism”, says John Milbank, the leading Anglo-Catholic theologian of the day, in this published debate with Slavoj Žižek, a Lacanian neo-Marxist writer and something of a Slovenian philosophical sensation in the Anglophone world (206). Theological materialism goes back to Christology, the materialism of the Logos made matter, in which matter really matters. Žižek would agree, but he would stand this statement on its head in a resuscitated and refashioned neo-Hegelian death of God theology. The debate that unfolds is strikingly Christological, in which both parties agree that Christianity is the absolute truth (Hegel), where Milbank takes his Christology straight up (treating Žižek’s as a “counterfeit”) and Žižek takes his on the rocks (treating Milbank’s version as “imaginary” (153, 245). The book is a splendid condensation and cross section of a contemporary debate between writers who seek to position themselves beyond the postmodernism or poststructuralism that dominated the last few decades of European thought. Whatever one thinks of the views of Milbank or Žižek, we may be very grateful to editor Creston Davis for crafting such a first rate exchange.
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Read the full review:
http://ndpr.nd.edu/review.cfm?id=17605
THE MONSTROSITY OF CHRIST
Slavoj Žižek and John Millbank.
Hardback: MIT Press, 2009.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]
THE NY TIMES Review of
Sara Maitland’s A BOOK OF SILENCE
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/books/review/Browning-t.html
We live in noise. The world is a booming, rustling, buzzing place to begin with (though many of us have shut out nature’s clamor), and to that we have added every conceivable vibration of our own making and every possible means of assault, whether it’s the vast, thrumming climate-controlling systems of our sealed buildings or the tiny earbuds nestled against our cochleae. What chance does quiet have against all this?
Plenty, it turns out. Sara Maitland has scaled the heights (or is it depths?) of what might be the only frontier humankind will never conquer and cannot, in spite of itself, destroy — silence. Infinite, fathomless, terrifying, uplifting, unknowable, gorgeous silence. It’s difficult to convey the thrill of “A Book of Silence,” an adventure story that doesn’t involve roaring crowds or screaming headlines, doesn’t depict a heroine climbing high mountains or sailing vast oceans, doesn’t chronicle racing pulses or sweaty palms, and yet is every bit as awe-inspiring, death-defying and mind-blowing as any trip up Everest. Rarely have I been so amazed at the splendor of a new landscape unfolding before my eyes, and felt so tense wondering what was going to happen as this intrepid writer pushed her way across the pages.
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Read the full review:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/13/books/review/Browning-t.html
A BOOK OF SILENCE
Sara Maitland.
Hardback: Counterpoint, 2009.
Buy now: [ Amazon ]
