The rediscovery of the force and scope of apocalypticism in primitive Christianity can help systematic theology to find new openings for thoughts of faith that have long languished in systems that obstruct their expression.

The absoluteness of Christianity is a predicate of the God of the eschatological kingdom proclaimed by Jesus, a kingdom embracing the power of a universal future which also includes the entire sweep of the history of religions.

“Christ died for us” is the sine que non of every doctrine of the atonement.

Carl E. Braaten, No Other Gospel! Christianity among the World's Religions Minneapolis, USA: Fortress Press, 1992. Paperback: 146 pp. including endnotes and index.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:BOOK REVIEWS new appreciation of his thought. The differences between thirteenth-century and Renaissance humanism complicate the problem, but a more accurate and sensitive understanding of Aquinas's thought is by no means impossible. It is high time that Protestants put the old division behind them, high time they reclaim this part of their heritage-and they can rightly claim Aquinas as part of their heritage, since he did live and work (...) in the context of a still undivided Christendom. He is one of the teachers we can ill afford to do without as we attempt to meet the challenges of our own day (p. 174).' Whether Professor Vos achieves this objective can only be judged by those to whom the work is primarily addressed. Many of the misperceptions pointed out can be traced to misuse of St. Thomas's works in the era when he was the mandated author for Roman Catholic studies in philosophy and theology. Those who value the genuine thought of St. Thomas and regret the continuation of these misrepresentations by so-called Catholic traditionalists will welcome the contribution made by this book. THOMAS c. O'BRIEN Chambersburg, Pennsylvania Christian Dogmatics. By CARL BRAATEN (editor), GERHARD 0. FORDE, PHILIP J. HEFNER, ROBERT \V. JENSEN (editor) HANS SCHWARZ, and PAUL R. SPONHEIM. Two Volumes. Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984, xxii + 569 (Vol. 1) and xvii+ 621 (Vol. 2). Recent years have seen the proliferation among American Protestants of a seemingly odd genre: group dogmatics. For whatever reason, the present generation of' systematic theologians has not produced a dogmatics or systematic theology text that the theology teachers of' America seem to be happy with. So, a variety of' groups have banded together to divide all theology into so many parts,and as a team produce a usable theology text. The best known of' these group texts is Christian Theology: An Introduction to its Traditions and Tasks, edited by Peter G. Hodgson and Robert H. King (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1982), but there have also been Methodist and Conservative Evangelical versions. Christian Dogmatics is the latest example of' the genre, and an ambitious one. While the authors are all teachers at American Lutheran seminaries, their audience is the entire Christian Church. Their goal is to produce a " complete dogmatics " which will serve as " a textbook in theological instruction and a resource for those who practice the arts of ministry." (!,xvii-xviii). The volumes are organized in twelve loci, where a locus is " a point at which the historic teachings and theological investigations of BOOK REVIEWS 153 the church are brought into focus" (I, xix) : Prolegomena to Christian Dogmatics (Braaten, 78 pp.), The Triune God (Jenson, 114 pp.), The Knowledge of God (Sponheim, 76 pp.), The Creation (Hefner, 94 pp.), Sin and Evil (Sponheim, 104 pp.), The Person of Jesus Christ (Braaten, 104 pp.), The Work of Christ (Forde, 100 pp.), The Holy Spirit (Jenson, 78 pp.), The Church (Hefner, 70 pp.), The Means of Grace (Schwarz and Jenson, 142 pp.), Christian Life (Forde, 80 pp), and Eschatology (Schwarz, 116 pp.). Each locus consists of 4 to 7 chapters, each chapter beginning with a few summarizing sentences. The authors sometimes organize the loci "systematically" (e.g., the knowledge of God is organized according to questions that parallel Aristotle's four causes); more often the author's combine the systematic and the historical, moving through Seriptures and tradition and modernity as well as providing a conceptual frame for their topic. A lengthy index of names and subjects in volume two (II,591-621) helps the reader track the overlap between these loci. A variety of threads tie the disparate contributions together. The six authors share a common outlook on contemporary theology, which might be called a theological version of "the radical middle." Decisive for this outlook is the conviction that there is a doctrinal core to the faith which it is the central task of dogmatics to explicate (I,5). Although the problems and conceptualities of the modern world are addressed throughout the text, they are not allowed to set the interpretative agenda. In keeping their eyes fixed on this interpretative task, the authors avoid both the left and right. Liberation theology, process... (shrink)

Book reviewed in this article: Rights Talk: The Impoverishment of Political Discourse. By Mary Ann Glendon.

Law provides a rich language for thinking about bioethical issues and is a tool for action as well as talk. But the language of the law, often inapt, regularly fails to achieve its desired effect.

Recent studies indicate that patients who are diagnosed with vegetative states may retain more awareness than their clinical assessments suggest. Disorders of consciousness traditionally have been diagnosed on the basis of outwardly observable behaviors alone, but new functional imaging studies have shown surprising levels of brain activity in some patients, indicating that even higher-level cognitive functions like language processing and visual imagery may be preserved. For example, one recently developed method purports to detect voluntary mental imagery solely on the basis (...) of neural response patterns observed with functional magnetic resonance imaging. This line of research has already led to some widely reported cases of patients who were discovered to have more brain activity than expected. In November 2009, Rom Houben, a Belgian man who was thought to be in a coma for 23 years, was diagnosed with locked-in syndrome through the use of neuroimaging; however, that assessment was later overturned by further testing. (shrink)

Let us look to America, not in order to make a servile copy of the institutions that she has established, but to gain a clearer view of the polity that will be the best for us; let us look there less to find examples than instruction; let us borrow from her the principles, rather than the details, of her laws. The laws of the French republic may be, and ought to be in many cases, different from those which govern the (...) United States; but the principles on which the American constitutions rest, those principles of order, of the balance of powers, of true liberty, of deep and sincere respect for right, are indispensable to all republics; they ought to be common to all …. —Alexis de Tocqueville Democracy in America. (shrink)

Though Nietzsche never developed a theory of history, his comments on time yield a radical approach to historical interpretation. Central to this philosophy is the concept of eternal recurrence. Time, with neither boundary nor purpose, returns from the past to repeat itself in its same form. This generates a psychological and moral problem for men, as it fails to provide the elements of meaning which Nietzsche considered essential to the human psyche. Men survive the aimlessness of history by living in (...) the unhistorical consciousness of the immediate present. Nietzsche's ideal is the suprahistorical man, whose awareness of history, and his disgust with it, lead him to find meaning in the structure of time-a structure of meaninglessness. The value system of history is this will to power and precludes the extension of historical judgment to situations beyond the sphere of inquiry. (shrink)