The Struggle for Theology’s Soul: Contesting Scripture in Christology by William M. Thompson (review)

BOOK REVIEWS The Stmggle for Theology's Soul: Contesting Scripture in Christology. By WILLIAM M. THOMPSON. New York: Crossroad, 1996. Pp. xii + 310. $39.95 (cloth). We can hardly exaggerate the importance of William Thompson's new work. After studying contemporary attempts to build a new Christology in The Jesus Debate, Thompson focused his attention on what holiness has contributed to Christology throughout the history of the Church (Fire and Light: The Saints and Theology and Christology and Spirituality). In his new work the thorough and sympathetic study of contemporary Christologies and the Bible, of the fathers and mothers of the Church, and of the insights contributed by the saints has resulted in a remarkable outline for a new synthesis. The study's scope is broad enough to invite responses not only from Roman Catholic but also from Protestant and Orthodox scholars. My impression is that the best theologians of the Christian tradition have long been awaiting the emergence of such an approach. In fact-as the comments on the cover confirm-some of them have enthusiastically welcomed the courage Thompson displays in calling for a new-and yet, in the best sense of the word, traditional-approach to Christology. Perhaps Professor Thompson's greatest merit consists in realizing the spiritual hunger of both theologians and rank and file Christians for a real encounter with Jesus Christ. When studying the relationship of the saints to Christ, he saw that they had a qualitatively more realistic knowledge of Christ than could ever be achieved by the conceptual-analytical approach of biblical scholars. Thompson calls the former a "participatory knowledge" in the very reality of Christ, a knowledge that presupposes and fosters faith, love, and the commitment to follow in Christ's footsteps. At the same time, it became obvious to him that the saints gained this participatory knowledge by reading and understanding the Scriptures within the community of the Church. Thus, with a vast and solid knowledge of Scripture, of patristic, medieval, and modern theology and spirituality, Thompson was able to develop the integrating method of his theology. Modestly, he calls his method "a 'family practice' style of biblical scholarship, meaning by that one in which biblical study and theology form a united whole" (ix). He is aware that in our age of specialization and fragmentation the re-establishment of "communion between Bible and theology" is not an easy task but a struggle, if we intend to take into account the vast amount of accumulated specialized research. In fact, the struggle is not simply on the level of academic work. In order to 133 134 BOOK REVIEWS know Christ with participatory knowledge, the theologian must engage in a struggle against his or her own sinfulness for a continuous conversion that should lead to a "deep, meditative kind of knowing" (3). Thompson is committed to this struggle with a real boldness (reminiscent indeed of Paul's parrhesia )-we might even say, with the inspiration and inner compulsion of the one who found a forgotten treasure: he confesses that unlike his other studies "this book 'wrote itselr through me" (ix). Thompson believes that the struggle for the knowledge of Christ through Scripture is "a contest for the very soul of theology as a whole" (5), since Christ is the center of all theology. He understands "contest" not merely in the sense of struggle, but as witnessing: the Scriptures bear witness along with the community of the Church (the original meaning of the verb contest is con-testifu:ari, "witness or testify together") to Christ himself. Yet, "the Bible is the Church's book and in fact it came into being through the mediation of the Church" (8). Thus, Scripture and Church tradition should not be separated or opposed. We need to study the whole work of Thompson to grasp his understanding of this "perichoretic" relationship (257 n. 11). On the one hand, the Scriptures are normative for all theology in the sense of patristic and high medieval theology. In the words of St. Thomas: "We should not say of God whatever is not found in Sacred Scripture either explicitly [vel per verba] or implicitly [vel per sensum]" (11). On the other hand, the...