Self, Earth and Society: Alienation and Trinitarian Transformation

Rating:
Summary: A Perichoretic Dance
Review: This is quite heady thinking, particularly in light of the myopic stereotype of Mennonites and assorted ilk. Finger does a superb job in engaging the more avant garde scholarship (so called) i.e. those publishing under the guise of Christian theology in the areas of psychology, sociology, and ecology. Content to placate the reigning ideology of pluralism and relativism under the auspices of "dialogue" he still manages to cogently (and sometimes even trenchantly)counter their misguided musings by marshaling a sophisticated "postmodern" construal of historic\orthodox Christian Theology. Showing the weaknesses of Freudian self-construction, Darwinian ontological violence, and the more naive ecofads, he delineates a solidly argued alternative for ultimate reconciliation between Man,himself,God, and Creation. The only suggestions that might have rendered his arguments not only imposing-in comparison to those of his interlocutors- but rather insuperable, are that "dialoging" (the pleasantries of lucid civility) should be replaced by critical engagement from an assumption of "right" with the concommitant debunking of the aforementioned ideology. Additionally, his denouement of the problems with Darwanism and his counter proposals perhaps would prove more salient if he followed his own incipient understanding of creational perichoresis (the interrelation of everything in the Cosmos characterized by interdependance,and interpenetration in both constitution and composition as well as differentiation and identification)following it to its logical conclusion - that to have anything within the Cosmos you must presuppose everything.Notwithstanding secondary contengient potentialities in creation that allow for limited reconfigurations (i.e. human and animal social development)this means that for the primary creational ontology (God, Man,and Creation holistically)the necessary requirement of existential simultanaity demands Cosmic "Punctuated Perichoresis" leaving evolution to its own devices; that of evolving into the proposition that it has for so long vainly challanged - an instantanious and whole Creation spoken "ex nihilo" by the God whose grace it would fully and immediately convey.All in all this is a tremendous little tome and will for years serve as a reminder of the nagging truth of orthodoxy against its antagonists who are even now running from Jesus' calling "in the cool of the day!"