FROM the foreword on, this book feels uncomfortable with the tricky business of finding words with which to express belief about Christ. In particular, how can we make it possible for those who find themselves in the “liberal” or “modern” Anglican tradition, “making the Christian message accessible to modern ears”, and assert that critical thinking about Christology is permissible and, indeed, to be encouraged?

The several contributors to this volume pay careful attention to issues that are simply not going to go away: for example, those that are brought to the surface by feminist studies and studies in comparative religion. As is only proper, we learn that Christology touches a whole range of human inquiry, rich discipline as it is; and that we must never allow ourselves to think that we have “solved the problem”.

There is a characteristically balanced essay by Mark Chapman, showing how liberating it is to have a grip on church history and the three-part model of Anglicanism (Anglo-Catholic, Evangelical, liberal). Jonathan Clatworthy writes on imperial theology, which is clearly seen as “A Bad Thing”. (Clatworthy is not a great admirer of the Emperor Constantine.)

Then, his co-editor, Alan Race, explores the implications of historical criticism and the insistence on the full humanity of Jesus, as he takes us from Albert Schweitzer to Marcus Borg. He points to four important elements in recent scholarship: that all the documents of the New Testament are “church-shaped”; that we have in recent years come to learn a good deal more about the world of first-century Palestine; that Jesus was Jewish; and, finally, that, in the 20th century, we came to see the importance of increasing critical consciousness. He makes interesting use of Jaroslav Pelikan’s “18 centuries” and adds a couple of his own.

Natalie Watson properly insists on the liberating potential of Christology for women; and, indeed, it must be said that this whole book asks some important questions, such as “What would a feminist Christopraxis in a multifaith world look like?”.

Likewise, in Chapter 5, Anantanand Rambachan offers some useful reflections on the history of the interaction of Hindu and Christian tradition. In particular, we meet some very interesting Hindu thinkers and their engagement with Christianity. Some of them thought that the Bible could not be considered as “revelation”, on the grounds that at least some biblical teachings were “irrational, immoral and untrue”.

Such thinkers also offer a useful account of what an “Asiatic Christ” might look like, and argue that “Jesus is better understood in the Asiatic than in the Western world.” Correspondingly, there is among Hindu thinkers less interest in the crucifixion and resurrection of Christ. For Hindus, Rambachan argues, the great attraction of Jesus is his God-centredness.

Mathias Schneider, writing about Buddhist-Christian encounter, points out that there are many different approaches to Christianity on the part of Buddhist thinkers, often springing from the quality of the encounter between the two theologies. So, Jesus is sometimes “demonised” and sometimes seen as a “Buddha from Nazareth”, while some see the whole project of Christology as an absurdity, and others again see Jesus as a “manifestation of ultimate reality”. Buddhists, on the whole, see Jesus’s crucifixion as a failure. For the most part, Hindu thinkers have been impressed by Jesus, but less so by “institutionalised Christianity”.

The article by Paul Hedges is “Liberating White Jesus: A Palestinian Liberation Theology approach . . . Racism, Anti-Semitism and Colonialism in Christology”. You get the picture. Hedges accurately locates Christian teaching about Christ as the origin of anti-Semitism and, therefore, something to be taken very seriously indeed.

The book ends with an afterword, bringing the whole story together, and noting how theologians and Churches have shifted, but in opposite directions. We can expect to have to grapple with truth and reason, and not to be “hindered by dogma” (all of which sounds very proper). We can focus on the humanity of Jesus, and on an awareness of our changing context.

This afterword ends, interestingly but entirely unexpectedly, by referring to a recent General Congregation of the Jesuits. We should listen carefully, especially to the editors’ final conclusion: “millions through the centuries praised [Jesus] in the highest language they had, because he had brought them hope.”

In the end, the book sometimes seems to have an unsatisfactory thinness about it, which comes from the unthought slogan that “We can’t say that sort of thing in the 21st century.” It seems important to examine why previous generations felt it important to “say that sort of thing”, but, in the present volume, the reader is, in places, left thinking “Why bother?”

A good question when reading a different religious tradition is not “How can I prove these people wrong?” so much as “What can we learn from this thinker?” That may be a reflection to keep in mind when reading this book.
 

Fr Nicholas King SJ is on the staff of Farm Street Church, in London.

What Christ? Whose Christ? New options for old theories
Alan Race and Jonathan Clatworthy, editors
Sacristy Press £19.99
(978-1-78959-340-2)
Church Times Bookshop £17.99