Believing in a revealing God: The basis of the Christian Life.

Cunningham, David S.

BELIEVING IN A REVEALING GOD: THE BASIS OF THE CHRISTIAN LIFE. By Gabriel Moran. Collegeville, Minn.: Liturgical, 2009. Pp. iii + 194. $29.95.

Although Gabriel Moran is renowned for his work on religious education, one of his most significant books is his Theology of Revelation (1966). Despite its age, it still ranks as one of the best single-author works on the subject; its clarity of exposition, irenic critique of propositionalist accounts, and new vision for understanding the doctrine make it required reading for my students. Anticipating the present volume, one might imagine it summarizing the earlier book's insights and then considering the implications for related concerns (authority, interreligious dialogue, and the arts). Such a volume would be most welcome. Unfortunately, that is not what is offered here.

While the book's introduction and opening chapters emphasize a relational approach to revelation, many key insights of the earlier volume (concerning, e.g., Christ as the recipient of revelation, and the objectification of apostolic revelation) are completely missing. Positively, here M. does develop here a helpful parallel between faith as trust (as opposed to assent to propositions) and revelation as relation (as opposed to a body of doctrine). He thus emphasizes the reciprocity of faith and revelation; faith must be in someone, and revelation must be to someone. The style of these early chapters is inviting, accessible to students who may final M.'s earlier book tough going. And readers will get at least some taste of M.'s insistence that revelation happens now, in the encounter of the believer with Christ, and in community--not merely when events from the past are presented in doctrinal form for an individual's assent.

Subsequent chapters offer interesting perspectives on various issues of contemporary concern: authority, ecclesiology, interreligious dialogue, and Christian education. But most seem highly occasional--perhaps provoked by M.'s disappointment concerning the unfulfilled promise of Vatican II--and the treatment and content is only distantly connected to M.'s insights about the complementarity of belief and revelation that ostensibly structure the book. In some cases the reader can construct such a connection: for example, authority has focused too much on rules and demands rather than on dynamic relationships within the church, and this suggests an analogy to the need to go beyond "revelation as deposit of faith" to "revelation as mutual relationship." But the book is written at too introductory a level to expect its readers to connect all the dots. The chapter on the church that focuses primarily on the issue of "responsibility" was not terribly persuasive, but my primary concern was its lack of any clear connection to the believing-revealing dialectic that is supposed to animate the book as a whole.

Two chapters focus on interreligious dialogue. After an unpromising opening section that too easily accepts certain (highly contested) contemporary uses of the word "religion," M. strengthens his case by focusing on the insights about revelation and salvation that can be learned by Christians from Jewish and Muslim accounts. Although helpful, these two chapters would have been much stronger had they concentrated on these elements alone, omitting any reflection on "religion" (as well as a lengthy, and not particularly edifying, discussion of "uniqueness'). Least helpful was a highly compressed section on the logic of revelation in literature that attempts to cover four hugely significant works (Flannery O'Connor's "Revelation" and Wise Blood, plus Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot and Endgame) in just five pages. The engagement with these monumental texts is too brief even to indicate what might be gained from them; worse, errors creep in. (In the discussion of Wise Blood, one character is given the name of another, and described as blind when he only pretends to be; another character's name is misspelled. In Godot, a specific reference to Christianity is described as the "only" one in the play, ignoring its long opening discussion of the two thieves.) This section is something of a digression in a chapter devoted to other concerns--paralleling similar scattered digressions, ranging in length from a sentence to a paragraph. For such matters, the blame lies with the publisher's editing process.

I am a great admirer of M.'s work, particularly on revelation. It is therefore a disappointment not to be able to provide a stronger recommendation of this book.

DAVID S. CUNNINGHAM

Albert-Ludwigs-Universitat, Freiburg