Craig keen is a wonderful theologian and After Crucifixion is a beautiful work of theology which succinctly illuminates his perspective (quite personaCraig keen is a wonderful theologian and After Crucifixion is a beautiful work of theology which succinctly illuminates his perspective (quite personally, I think, but by no means comprehensively). And as such, it offers a welcome contribution to a variety of theological conversations. If we only learn from his posture of humility in the theological task, his book will have proved its significance. But this book has more to offer.
As a sustained reflection on what it means to take up the cross and following Jesus, After Crucifixion is a theological book about theology, about eucharist, God, hope, memory, church, practice, gospels (Mark in particular), and the gospel. There's a lot of potential here to place Keen in conversation with other heavyweights in the field. For example, his reflections on hope and memory place him, in my mind anyway, in conversation with the early Moltmann's reflections on crucifixion and resurrection in Theology of Hope and The Crucified God. Keen writes,
"And yet a dream of God--this God--is no ordinary dream, nor night terror... It is an apocalyptic vision. As such it makes manifest what good people do not want to see, perhaps cannot see. It manifests above all that there is a tomorrow that no yesterday can dictate. But it does so with the ambiguity that accompanies every call to revolution. 'The Reign of God is coming,' it says, 'and it is coming for you!'" (25)
He also writes,
"The gospel insists that Jesus' Holy Father, alive in heaven, is made manifest in life. The gospel indeed insists that the forsaken death of the carnal Son makes the Holy Father manifest, but that it does so in the work of the Spirit through the resurrection of his dead and damned body."(28)
I could also put Craig in conversation with Paul Tillich, perhaps even as a criticism of Tillich's perspective on hope. For Tillich, hope for the 'new' has to have some grounding in what has already been experienced in reality, in the 'old,' or else it is absurd. Hope, for Tillich, has something to do with potential. But for Keen, hope is, to a degree, unhinged from potential and past experience (even while it does not cease to be the hope for that which is utterly experienced).
“The hope of a future in Christ is a hope that does not lean on present and available ability, some power-pack of recovery. An act of the properly potential may restore, satisfy, and complete, but it will never break the chain that keeps it tethered to the essentially old. It may be relatively, but isn't absolutely new.” (49)
Keen, in fact, does not place himself in conversation with Tillich and Moltmann as much as he does with Hauerwas and Cavanaugh. The "earthy quality" (from the back cover) and carnality of his theology places his work in conversation with political and contextual theologies while by no means crossing neatly into any such categories.
Craig offers charitable and pointed criticisms for ecclesiology. "There may be no English word," he writes, "as bent and broken by casual misuse, or drained of blood by idealizing admirers and apologists, or grossly caricatured by huckstering detractors, as church" (41).
All this is to say, if you're looking for another theologian to engage, Craig Keen's work has lots of open doors for conversation, both for personal theological reflection and academic advancement. I recommend this book to you as one to read carefully and with expectation. ...more
Andrew Root doesn't just offer a new way forward for practical theology, he offers it as a distinct way of thinking theologically, full stop. AttendinAndrew Root doesn't just offer a new way forward for practical theology, he offers it as a distinct way of thinking theologically, full stop. Attending to the concrete and lived experience of divine and human encounter--in the face of the impossibility which surrounds human action--Root exegetes the text of human experience through the lens of God's being as becoming, through the lens of ministry itself. As such, Root gives us a theological method (indeed a theology of the cross) that is practical, interdisciplinary, but utterly and fundamentally theological--grounded in normativity. Through the (perhaps counterintuitive) lens of justification, Root shifts the ground on which practical theology stands, orienting human action toward reception of the ministering presence of the living Jesus within the impossibility and death of the human condition. Root puts the 'theology' back in practical theology and turns 'practice' back toward participation in the person of God through the ministry of God.
This may be the most important work in the field of practical theology in the last decade. It is no doubt the most important theological contribution from Andrew Root so far. ...more
An absolutely amazing book! It gets better and better as you go along. It has to be considered one of the best theological works on creation and anthrAn absolutely amazing book! It gets better and better as you go along. It has to be considered one of the best theological works on creation and anthropology in history. This is right up there with Crucified God and Theology of Hope!...more
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