The Triune God: Persons, Process, and Community by Joseph A. Bracken, S.J. (review)

172 nooK m~vrnws good Lutheranism but is basic Christian doctrine as understood by Catholics also. Thiemann, however, goes further. At one point, relying on Robert Jenson, he asserts that, on peril of works-righteousness, justification or salvation must not be conceived as any kind of causal process involving interaction between the divine and human agencies. While asserting this, he also denies that human beings are purely passive in their own justification (96-97). The idea that sanctification is a process involving the activity of both God and creatures is well rooted in the Lutheran as well as the Catholic tradition. Perhaps because he treats the whole question so briefly, Thiemann does not seem to me to provide an intelligible alternative. As should be obvious by this point, Thiemann's book deals with a multitude of crucially important questions. It enters into the very heart of the contemporary debate about revelation and theological methodology, and makes many insightful contributions. For the most part, I am enthusiastic about his approach, which seems to offer a highly promising alternative to the theological options he rejects. What I regard as shortcomings in this book are partly due to its relative brevity, granted the vast range of topics on which it touches. But the very breadth of the horizons makes this book especially stimulating and arouses the reader's eagerness to hear more from its talented author. The Catholic University of America Washington, D.C. AVERY DULLES, S.J. The Triune God: Persons, Process, an(l Community. By JOSE.PH A. BRACKEN, S.J. College Theology Society: Studies in Religion, 1. Lanham, Md.: University Press of America, 1985. Pp. viii + 208, incl. Glossary, Bibliography and Index. $22.50 (cloth), $11.75 (pb.). Among the questions that urge themselves upon contemporary practitioners of theology few are more masic than that of the reconstruction of theology itself. How radical a reconstruction (and thus a corresponding deconstruction) is called for~ This volume represents Joseph Bracken's option on the issue. He is willing to wager all on an integral attempt to begin everything anew with the resources for a systematic theology provided by the thought of Alfred North Whitehead. This includes drawing upon other authors who have expanded upon, and in some ways altered, the seminal thought of Whitehead. Earlier attempts at something like this that come readily to mind are: Daniel Day Wil- BOOK REVIEWS 173 liams's The Spirit and Forms of Love (1968), Norman Pittenger's Process Thought and Christian Faith (1968), Paul Sponheim's Faith and Process (1979), Marjorie Suchocki's God-Christ-Church (1982), and the several books of John Cobb, notably perhaps A Christian Natural Theology (1965), and in a qualified sense Schubert Ogden's The Reality of God (1963), and Langdon Gilkey's Reaping the Whirlwind (1976). In addition to these are several collections of essays, e.g. Process Theology, edited by Ewart Cousins (1971), and Process Philosophy and Clwisf'ian Thought, edited by Delwin Brown, Ralph E. James, and Gene Reeves (1971). Bracken's book, however, is seemingly the first attempt by a Catholic theologian at a full-scale process systematics-though some articles on particular doctrinal areas, those of Bernard Lee on the sacraments for example, are available. A considerable price has to be paid for such an endeavor in terms of a deconstruction of what has gone on in theology before-too high a price in the estimation of many. To take just a random sampling from Bracken's treatment of the Trinity alone, many will be given pause by statements such as the following: " the three divine persons are constantly growing in knowledge and love of one another" (p. 7) ; "... the human community is part of the communitarian life of God [so that] creation is part of the total reality of the Son ... who is part of creation " (p. 7); "In a very real sense, the Son is incarnate in us as he was in Jesus, but not to the same degree" (p. 53); "Accordingly, while as distinct persons they possess separate consciousnesses, nevertheless they together form a single shai·ed consciousness" (p. 25); "... creation as a whole but above all the human community, men and...