Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology

Routledge, January 1999. Paper Back. New. A sampling of a type of thinking that might turn out to be a full-fledged movement in modern theology, an engagement of postmodern theology and philosophy on its own ground, but from a position grounded in historical Christian orthodoxy. Let's make it clear -- the Orthodoxy in the title reads small-o ''orthodoxy'' in normal text. The coterie of scholars who make up the ''radical orthodox'' project are all Roman Catholic or Anglo-Catholic scholars, mostly centered at Cambridge University. As to their project, we will let them speak for themselves: ''For several centuries now, secularism has been defining and constructing the world. It is a world in which the theological is either discredited or turned into a harmless leisure-time activity of private commitment...The present collection of essays attempts to reclaim the world by situating its concerns and activities within a theological framework. Not simply returning in nostalgia to the premodern, it visits sites in which secularism has invested heavily -- aesthetics, politics, sex, the body, personhood, visibility, space -- and re-situates them from a Christian standpoint; that is, in terms of the Trinity, Christology, the Church and the Eucharist...'' (from the Introduction). How is it orthodox? -- ''in the most straightforward sense of commitment to credal Christianity and the exemplarity of its patristic matrix.'' How is it radical? -- ''in the sense of a return to patristic and medieval roots,'' though a return re-examined and critiqued. The range of essays contained in this book fairly represents the aforementioned concerns. They are uneven in value -- we would radically question the orthodoxy of ''God's Sex,'' for instance -- but the overall premises of ''radical orthodoxy'' and the efforts of most the other contributors deserve close examination by the community of theologians. Pristine copy.