Edifying discourses

Christian Century, July 2, 1997

We asked five theologians if they would each name a handful of books, written in the past two decades, which they would commend to pastors and church leaders for building up Christian life and thought.

Ellen Charry, professor at Perkins School of Theology in Dallas, who this fall moves to Princeton Theological Seminary, recommends:

Christian Feminist Theology.

By Denise Carmody. Blackwell, 1995.

Here is a moderate feminist systematic theology that is thoroughly Christian and deeply spiritual, and that refreshingly probes faith for our time. Carmody touches the themes of traditional Christian doctrine using a feminist and catholic perspective to carry readers to know and love God through a practiced spiritual life. Incisive study questions are an added bonus.

The Creative Suffering of God.

By Paul S. Fiddes. Clarendon, 1988.

The notion that God suffers with and on behalf of those who suffer implicates God's participation in time and space in a way that is foreign to traditional theism because it suggests that we affect God.

Fiddes works through the contributions of process theology and the work of Karl Barth, Paul Tillich and Jurgen Moltmann, moving to a trinitarian suggestion for understanding the God of Jesus Christ as thoroughly engaged with creation and yet fully God. He is also attentive to the implications of this teaching for the formation of piety.

A Teachable Spirit: Recovering the Teaching Office of the Church.

By Richard Robert Osmer. Westminster John Knox, 1990.

At a time when mainline Protestant denominations are both drifting and bickering, Osmer calls the church to chart a path between authoritarianism and individualism by reclaiming its authority to direct its life according to its own theological lights. The proper teaching office of the church is traced from the Catholic through the Lutheran and Reformed traditions and concludes with a contemporary proposal for engaging the faithful in their own theological growth.

Discerning the Mystery: An Essay on the Nature of Theology.

By Andrew Louth. Clarendon, 1981.

Louth is helping move theology past the Enlightenment legacy which has made it nervous regarding claims about God and truth and has forced it to package itself on the model of modern science.

Drawing on Hans Georg Gadamer, Michael Polanyi and Gabriel Marcel, Louth argues that modern science is itself a tradition, with its own methods and presuppositions, and that this tradition is parallel to but not dependent on the Enlightenment paradigm. His goal is to free theology to reclaim its own strength. He goes so far as to reconsider allegory as a way of getting at the truth.

Not the Way It's Supposed to Be: A Breviary of Sin.

By Cornelius Plantinga. Eerdmans, 1995.

In a deceptively relaxed way, this book calls late 20th-century Christians to reconsider the centrality of sin. Plantinga's anecdotes and vignettes from contemporary life amuse and pique the reader into seeing sin in a realistic light in a society that has ceased to value self-reproach and the pleasure of glorifying God. With insight into human nature worthy of the Desert Fathers, Plantinga reclaims the Augustinian insight that sin damages the sinner.

William C. Placher, professor of philosophy and religion at Wabash College in Crawfordsville, Indiana, lists these works:

Christian Doctrine.

By Shirley C. Guthrie. Westminster John Knox, 1994.

Guthrie ironically defines himself as an authority on "what Presbyterians used to believe," but he has written the best introduction for laypeople to the faith of moderate, mainstream Protestants. In this antitheological age, just laying out basic Christian doctrines becomes a bold project.

Binding the Strong Man.

By Ched Myers. Orbis, 1988.

At the core of the Christian faith is the conviction that reading the Gospels seriously might transform one's life and begin the transformation of the world. Few books make the case for that conviction more forcefully than this radical reading of Mark's Gospel.

Texts of Terror.

By Phyllis Trible. Fortress, 1984.

Two of the most important trends in contemporary Christian theology have been feminism and the appeal to literary approaches to reading the Bible. Trible's work combines both approaches, and never more movingly than in these essays about the horror of Old Testament stories of women murdered and abandoned, stories which yet somehow speak to faith.

Saint Maybe.

By Anne Tyler Knopf, 1991.

A Prayer for Owen Meany.

By John Irving. Morrow, 1989.

These two extraordinary novels show that if it is possible (with grace) to live a Christian life, the thought of trying is pretty terrifying. Tyler's readers will not soon forget the Church of the Second Chance, and Irving's readers will be hooked from the first sentence.

Amy Plantinga Pauw, who teaches theology at Louisville Presbyterian Seminary, offers this list:

The Message of the Psalms.

By Walter Brueggemann. Augsburg, 1984.

This work, along with Brueggemann's other writings on the Psalms, including Israel's Praise and the recent The Psalms and the Life of Faith, has done much to bring the psalter in all its diversity back into the homiletical, liturgical and pastoral life of the church. His reflections on the place of lament in Christian life and worship are especially valuable.