Neil Ormerod, Creation, Grace, and Redemption (Mary Knoll: Orbis, 2007), xii + 228 pps., $20.00
Neil Ormerod is head of the theology faculty at the St. Mary Campus of the Australian Catholic University and the author of Introducing Contemporary Theologies. The book provides a solid introduction to the themes of creation, grace, and redemption, integrating classical and modern theological resources with perspectives from science, cultural studies, and interfaith dialogue, developing a Christian anthropology along the way. Ormerod is a well-established Catholic scholar, whose systematic expertise is grounded in the philosophical horizons of Bernard Lonergan. This book explores Christian responses to questions regarding what matters most in a human life in an accessible style, one that is also perfectly adaptable to classroom use in introductory courses. He covers such topics as the creation of the cosmos, the role of woman and man in the world, the presence and structure of moral evil, original sin, redemption in and through the atonement of Jesus, grace, forgiveness and reconciliation, death and the afterlife, and eschatology. In what follows, chapters will be overviewed, and select points shall be highlighted from the text.
Chapter one covers the God of creation, noting five models for creation: 1) creation ex nihilo, 2) creation ex divino (i.e. creation out of divine substance itself), 3) creation by emanation (which sees creation as a hierarchical series of emanations from the divine), 4) dualist accounts of creation (i.e. Gnostic), and 5) Process accounts of creation. Notably, and quite rightly in my opinion, he does not argue for a creation ex nihilo, saying that it appears that God creates from preexistent material according to the Genesis account (4). In the second chapter, Ormerond discusses human beings within God’s creation, addressing two elements of modern science that makes it difficult to hold onto a biblical conception of humanity’s import in the world: the sheer size of the universe, and evolution by natural selection. In so doing, he develops a realist account of reality and affirms the goodness of creation, despite the presence of moral evil, which is the subject of chapter three. Therein, he supports that the problem of moral evil has personal, social, and cultural dimensions to it, and he examines each one in turn.
The fourth chapter covers original sin, noting that this belief is essentially a Western one, deriving ultimately from the conflict that Augustine had with Pelagius (68). As an important note, he characterizes the creation account in Genesis 2-3 as an etiological myth, expressing in mythological terms the following essential truths of humanity: 1) that sin has been a part of the human story from the beginning; 2) sin lies in human actions and decision; 3) once entered into, sin grows and leaves no one and nothing untouched, as it is the condition that binds us; and 4)despite sin, God has not abandoned us (77). Fortunately, God does not leaves us in sin, but provides the way out of it through redemption in Jesus’ name, which constitutes his topic in the fifth chapter. In this chapter, he explores the experience and language of salvation in its biblical, traditional, and contemporary forms. Chapter six discusses the interior story of grace and its appropriation, noting that it is the divine solution to the problem of human sin and evil. Therein, he asserts that grace is the gift of divine power, power that intended to be used to break out of the compulsive power of sin (109).
Chapter seven explicates church and sacrament, noting that the church, in a sense, is the prolongation of the theology of grace into human history (133). Grace manifests itself in calling people into this community of saints known as the church. The eighth chapter explores the unfolding reality of forgiveness and reconciliation, first wrought by Jesus, and then enacted by patrons to restore the broken relationships that mar human existence. Chapter nine discusses death and the afterlife, and may be the hardest chapter for Protestants to stomach within this title, for Ormerond herein mentions the Catholic belief in purgatory, noting that prayers for the dead are efficacious, the postmortem state is one of purification or suffering, and that this suffering is but for a time. The book is ended with a chapter on eschatology, wherein Ormerond contends that, based on the resurrection of Jesus, there will be both continuity and discontinuity in the resurrected bodies of the saints (204–06).
In sum, though this book is written by a confessional Catholic, it is not only for Catholics, but could be used across the theological spectrum. Tracing the logic of the Christian narrative, Ormerod draws on the theological heritage of the church at large (e.g. Augustine, Aquinas, Lonergan, and Doran) and develops an understanding of the tradition in the light of contemporary developments in philosophy and science. He argues for the continuing significance of the Christian tradition for contemporary Christianity. Readers will especially enjoy his rethinking of the metaphors of the atonement, as well as his very personal discussion of the idea of forgiveness. All in all, this is a fine text and is to be highly recommended to the undergraduate student.
Bradford McCall, Regent University, Virginia Beach, VA.