Realist Christian Theology in a Postmodern Age. (Book reviews: summaries and comments).

Meconi, David Vincent

PATTERSON, Sue. Realist Christian Theology in a Postmodern Age. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. viii + 175 pp. Cloth, $54.95; paper, $18.95--Patterson's work is ultimately an investigation into postmodern hermeneutical theories. She proceeds by applying Wittgenstein's distinction between language's ability to describe but never justify matters of empirical fact to theological questions raised by later twentieth century thought. Patterson realizes that as speaking persons we inevitably play language-games, and it is precisely these games which allow us to relate to other persons, both human and divine. In exploring such a line of thought, she clearly sees her own work as "the pursuit of a more helpful Wittgenstein" (p. 7), the goal of which is to bring many voices together to construct a way that enables Christianity to hold on to an unwavering realism while simultaneously admitting that all use of human language is inevitably fragmentary and idolatrous. As she rightly asks, "For who but God is able to comprehend the whole?" (p. 32). In other words, how can Christianity maintain the absoluteness of the Divine amid the contingency and flux of human experience as manifested in temporal relationships, in language? It is unfortunate that from the start Patterson provides no clear definition of how she will use the term postmodernism, pays no attention to its roots in post-Cartesian thought, and, in limiting her treatment to the linguistic, overlooks elemental critiques against modernity such as, the claim to power and the deification of progress.

Patterson's first three chapters focus mainly on language's abilities and inabilities to form a coherent world view. She first examines the recent attempts of such thinkers as George Lindbeck and Hans Frei to construct what she calls a "postliberal theistic realism" (p. 43). This position is marked by its strong reaction to postmodernity's destruction of an objective world view, the meta-narrative, but has done so by ignoring "questions of language and context" and has thus "failed to deal adequately with the complexity and contingency of human reality" (p. 51). Patterson sees the corrective to such one-sidedness in the writings of David Ford and Werner Jeanrond, who seek a "middle-distance realism" both able to "find" and "fashion" the Gospel (p. 53). As theistic reality is simultaneously found and fashioned, however, one cannot help but wonder what authoritative or binding criteria, if any, Patterson would suggest are employed throughout this process: whose religious experience is more accurate, if not true? Whose divine nomenclature should be employed and why?

Chapters 4 and 5 thus seek to work out a more precise way of talking about the two central Christian claims: the Trinity and the Incarnation. To do this Patterson returns to Wittgensteinian models of language in what she sees as the solution to both postmodern relativism and a simplistic realism: theistic realism. Theistic realism is accordingly defined as keeping "the grammar of realism" while knowing that all human attempts at truth "cannot be verified other than `vertically'" (p. 97). Patterson thus concludes that since the Divine is the truest referent, only a world view with God at its center can be entirely intelligible. The final two chapters, "Becoming Persons" and "Becoming the Church," aim to put this world view into practice by exploring how such a theological realism would manifest itself in the lives of individuals and in the life of the Christian community.

Although Patterson's initial questions are worthy of attention, her work as a whole disappoints. Despite a commanding knowledge of the literature, her writing is oftentimes unclear. More substantially, by choosing to bypass basic metaphysical questions, she cannot help but tend toward a fideism, and her foundational presuppositions--from the fallacy that "Scripture interprets itself" (p. 11) to the "self-invention" of the Church (p. 165)--ignore the most basic claims of creedal Christianity.--David Vincent Meconi, S. J., University of Innsbruck.