The Revelatory Body: Theology as Inductive Art by Luke Timothy Johnson
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

God but Not as We Know Her

For those of us who find themselves in opposition to the ideology of power inherent in much Christian theology, Luke Timothy Johnson, an eminent Christian theologian, has written a remarkable book. His thesis is incontrovertible, that is, that divine revelation, no matter how such is defined, must be channelled through human beings. In this sense, the human body is the instrument of revelation and its interpretations in creeds and commentaries.

This simple premise - that our ideas about God must be articulations of human experiences - has profound implications when taken seriously. For a start it implies that theology is, only can be, an attempt to capture in language the spiritual and divine, those things that transcend rational thought but which are nevertheless real to those who experience them. Theology, that is, is per force inductive, as are the fundamental scriptures on which it is based.

Perhaps more significantly, theology and its associated creeds and commentaries become idolatrous when their inductive character is ignored. They then transform from an attempt to communicate experience into a statement of required belief. At that point, they have become instruments of institutional power rather than expressions of faith.

Johnson is a serious and committed Catholic who has written some of the best biblical and credal commentaries in existence. In The Revelatory Body, he has taken very careful aim at those who mis-use scripture and theological tradition to further an agenda of political power rather than of religious truth. This includes a former pope, John Paul II, and his views on sexual morality, which Johnson finds deplorable in his selective use of scripture.

Johnson leaves much unsaid and unresolved, among which, whose experiences 'count' in theology, the place of 'privilege' when it comes to scriptural and credal texts, and the way in which diverse expressions of belief can be synthesized into anything coherent. Nevertheless, The Revelatory Body has the potential to open a new debate in Christian theology. Who knows, such a debate might even result in a new revelation.

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