Clothed in Nothingness: Consolation for Suffering.

McManus, Kathleen

CLOTHED IN NOTHINGNESS: CONSOLATION FOR SUFFERING. By Leonard M. Hummel. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2003. Pp. xii + 201. $18.

Writing from his experience as both pastor and theologian in the Evangelical Lutheran tradition, Leonard Hummel investigates the relationship between tradition and lived religion in situations of suffering. How do beliefs inform practice, and how do beliefs and practice provide consolation in suffering?

True to his stated conviction that human suffering is the starting point of theology, H. roots his study in the experiences of seven Lutheran subjects whom he calls "co-researchers." The book successfully witnesses that their lives are "living documents" that bear scrutiny as surely as any theological text. H. dialectically situates these "documents" in conversation with theologies of consolation from the early Lutheran tradition as well as with contemporary Lutheran scholarship, thus illuminating his context in a way particularly helpful for the non-Lutheran reader. In the process, H. grapples with the questions emerging from the living scenarios of his co-researchers and ultimately finds that theoretical contradictions are resolved in the substance of their (albeit diverse) experiences. While H.'s method provides useful insights for theologians and pastors of all Christian traditions, it does so most effectively by analogy via the particularity of the experiences of these distinct Lutherans.

The Lutheran tradition points sufferers away from preoccupation with un answerable questions and things invisible, and asserts that the means and practices of consolation are to be found in Scripture, the sacraments, the priesthood of all believers, and creation. The co-researchers' experiences reveal that the means of consolation are in every case interpersonally mediated, and it is precisely the interpersonal dimension that is ultimately experienced as consoling. Luther's claim that God's consolation is "clothed in nothingness," that is, clothed in finite, human, fallible practices, is thus vindicated in what H. describes as a "relational ontology."

Finally, H.'s analysis of how the lived religion of his co-researchers might "revision" Lutheranism engages the work of Kathryn Tanner, among others, and provides an important contribution to the current conversation on culture, "tradition," and "traditioning." The book gives needed flesh to that scholarly discourse even as it offers wisdom to the pastoral practitioner.

KATHLEEN MCMANUS, O.P.

University of Portland, Oregon