Amos Yong, The Dialogical Spirit: Christian Reason and Theological Method in the Third Millennium (Eugene, Oregon: Cascade Books, 2014), viii + 336 Pps., $39.00.
Amos Yong is Professor of Theology & Mission and Director of the Center for Missiological Research at Fuller Seminary, Pasadena, California. He is the author and editor of more than two-dozen books, including Spirit of Love: A Trinitarian Theology of Grace (2012). This book is a companion to his The Missiological Spirit: Christian Mission Theology for the Third Millennium Global Context (Cascade Books, 2014).
Contemporary proposals for Christian theology from postliberalism to Radical Orthodoxy and beyond have espoused their own methodological paradigms. Is there any need, therefore, for another book on theological method? In conversation with recent developments in Pneumatology, the thesis of this book is that a pneumatological starting point provides the needed theological platform to enable the retrieval, as well as renewal, of historic Christian faith on the one hand and authentic engagement with other theological trends on the other hand. The chapters within this book demonstrate the thesis through a series of theological conversations. Most of these articles have been previously published, spanning the years of 1997 to 2012. Soon after completing his dissertation, Yong wrote his first book on theological methodology: Spirit-Word-Community: Theological Hermeneutics in Trinitarian Perspective (2002). In this volume, Yong presents theological method as tied up with theological content, and vice versa. Hence, Spirit-Word-Community argued for pneumatological imagination driven by reflection on the person and work of the Spirit. The volume currently under review builds on the work in Spirit-Word-Community.
In this book Yong notes that there are methodological challenges related to our postfoundationalist context, intra-Christian disagreements related to the fragmentation of the Christian world, an increasingly diversified public square related to our postsecular situation, and a cacophony of many religious voices trumpeted in our postmodern environment. The four parts of this volume address, respectively, the above mentioned challenges and characteristics of the current environ, and suggests, in conversation with twelve interlocutors, that a pneumatological and dialogical approach can turn these obstacles into opportunities for contextual reflection and global Christian witness. The dialogical approach herein signals a fundamental Christian virtue – namely, that of respecting the voices of others – while attempting to show how theological inquiry can proceed. It presumes that there is a biographical and narrative dimension to the theological task, and therefore seeks not only to depict but also to conduct theological inquiry in a performative manner. Herein, dialogue is not only said to be integral to theological method, but also shown to be so as well.
The debate regarding foundationalism continue to rage in the contemporary environment. The question of whether there are epistemological, or even ontological foundations upon which human thinking may rest is an important one for an affirmative answer to this question suggests that human disagreements can be adjudicated across cultural and religious lines. However, a negative response to this question implies that Christian truth claims are just some among many, each with their own internal justifications. The three essays of Part 1 take up the question of foundationalism. They argue that the pneumatological imagination invites recognition of a set of shifting foundations that recognize a multiplicity of starting pints for any dialogical encounter. Such a position avoids relativism while providing for a multiplicity of entry points into the dialogical interaction. Yong’s primary interlocutor in these three essays is Charles Sanders Peirce. Part 2 is comprised of three essays as well, focusing on the Post-Christendom Era and the Pentecostal Retrieval. There, Yong dialogues with the Baptist James William McClendon, Jr., dialogues with Veli-Matti Kärkkäinen, and with James K.A. Smith. Discussion of Smith’s Radical orthodox segues into Part 3, wherein Yong focuses of how scientific method compares or contrasts with theological method. It seems at times that science is counter to religion, but Yong postulates that science and religion are complimentary. The three essays in this chapter dialogue with Buddhists in what Yong terms a Christianity-science-other-religions trilogue.
Part 4, covering the Post-Modern Situation, is composed of four chapters, displays the fact that the pluralistic nature of our contemporary world in theology has driven much of Yong’s work. The essays herein dialogue with the Hindologist Francis X. Clooney, Reformed anthropologist Andre Droogers, and the evangelical-Reformed theologian and missiologist Benno van den Toren.
This book as a whole attempts to cultivate a cumulative argument for theological reason – or, more specifically, a pneumato-theological methodology – which is suited for the postfoundationalist, Post-Christendom, postsecular, and postmodern world of the twenty-first century. Yong not only proffers a model for Christian theological method suitable for the twenty-first-century global context but also exemplifies this methodological approach through his interactions that span the contemporary scholarly, academic, and theological landscape. Highly recommended for theologians.
Bradford McCall
Holy Apostles College and seminary