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Book Reviews
425
Jason A. Wyman, Jr.,Constructing Constructive Theology; An IntroductorySketch
(Minneapolis, Minnesota: Fortress Press, 2017). xxxiv + 199 pp. $34.00 paperback
Constructive theology may be understood as an approach, a method, and a set of commitments, but can it be considered its own distinct school of thought in theology? Is it really distinct from systematic theology, with its priorities on comprehensiveness and coherence, or dogmatic theology, with its com- mitments to doctrine and tradition? Wyman seeks to answer these questions affirmatively in his new book on constructive theology.Wyman’s work is among the first to describe constructive theology as a school of thought, not only for the reasons mentioned above, but because of a crucial history of canon and scholarly formation through the workgroup on constructive theology, formed in 1975 at Vanderbilt Divinity School.
Wyman offers a comprehensive overview, which seeks to situate what in our contemporary moment is understood as constructive theology within a longer arc of concern to fashion theology beyond the categories of orthodoxy and lib- eralism. In the introduction, he defines constructive theology as:
[A] method of doing Christian theology that takes seriously theological and church traditions as well as modern critiques of that tradition being something universal, eternal, or essential; it employs traditional themes and loci of theology in order to formulate useful, inclusive, fallible guid- ance for living as Christians in the contemporary world, against descrip- tions of a systematic theological system that pretend to unveil any true essence of essential reality of Christianity; and takes as it mode a good- faith engagement with parallel academic disciplines, often religious stud- ies; an activist/crisis confrontation; or, ideally, both.
xxx
In the book’s first two chapters, “The Emergence of ConstructiveTheology,” and “The Workgroup on Constructive Theology,” important figures and schools are described that play a seminal role in the emergence of constructive theology as a category. Wyman unearths lesser known figures such as Canadian the- ologian James Ten Broeke and American scholar Bernard Eugene Meland to argue for an early 20th century emergence of a set of concerns within liberal theology, which cannot be answered by liberal theology, because of its commit- ments to rationalism, scientific empiricism, historical criticism and the belief in progress. For Wyman, Broeke is a neglected, and seemingly unconnected fig- ure to Meland and the formation of the workgroup. But Broeke nevertheless foreshadows many of the concerns that will be taken up by constructive theol-
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ogy. He “emphasizes symbol, interpretation, and above all else, the constructed nature of Christianity” (6).
Like liberal theologians, these early thinkers of constructive theology, according to Wyman, share a general commitment to the post-Enlightenment disenchantment of the world and of religion, as well as Christian theological claims to metaphysical transcendence and evangelical universality. However, the aspirations of liberal theology are forever altered after two world wars, which devastate Europe, and unmask Christian theology’s corroborating role in the failures of modernity. With political liberalism and liberal theology both intellectually and morally exhausted after the holocaust, arguments for a con- structive approach to theology offer a new path beyond Christian realism and neo-Orthodoxy, seen as some sort of attempt at ‘supernaturalism’, and or con- tinued theological liberalism (16–17).
Better known figures then emerge as central to the contemporary under- standing of constructive theology. Central among them is Harvard theologian Gordon Kaufman, who Wyman says gives a full-throated restatement of a pri- mary conviction that “theology is inherently made up of ‘imaginative construc- tions’” (37). Following Christian ethicist and historian Gary Dorrien, Wyman links Kaufman’s An Essay on Theological Method and the 1975 formation of the workgroup on constructive theology, on the occasion of theologian Sal- lie McFague’s inauguration as dean of the Vanderbilt Divinity School as the two seminal events that allow for a new school within theology to be born. From there,Wyman traces more than 40 years of collaboration and publication history of the workgroup. The books produced by the group include: Chris- tian Theology, An Introduction to Its Traditions and Tasks(1982); Reconstructing Christian Theology (1994); Constructive Theology, A Contemporary Approach to Classical Themes(2005); and Awake to the Moment, An Introduction to Theology (2016).
In the last three chapters, “Constructive Theology as Interdisciplinary The- ology,” “Constructive Theology as Activist Theology,” and “Constructive Theol- ogy as Method and a Tradition,” Wyman attempts to highlight not just certain thinkers, but certain features of a mode of theology done in contrast to liberal- ism and orthodoxy. Theories of language and literary analysis are often key fea- tures of constructive theology.Wyman highlights McFague’s important work to describe these features. McFague’s work on metaphor is critical, because with- out returning to necessarily orthodox or confessional readings of Biblical texts and theological traditions, McFague can resist domination by historical critical methods, itself a type of reductionist or fundamentalist reading, and allow for a poetics of theological construction to emerge and allow for meaningful engage- ment with texts and their importance for theological construction (92–93).
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Wyman also highlights Catherine Keller’s commitments to process philoso- phy and polydoxy, Kathryn Tanner’s engagement with economics and social/ cultural theory, and the role black theologians—such as Dwight Hopkins, James Evans and Victor Anderson—have played in claiming constructive the- ology as a mode for their work.
This encyclopedic review of so many theologians, across so many different perspectives begs the question if constructive theology really is a tradition, or even a method. It remains unclear: is constructive theology is anything more than liberal theology? (48) Radical orthodoxy, for example, is deeply interdis- ciplinary, but would seem to be much more committed to dogma than con- structive theology. Further, Wyman admits that while constructive theology can be activist, that liberation theology should not necessarily be read as con- structive theology. For Wyman, the lack of attention to race is one of the key factors undergirding this caution, while at the same time he acknowledges that within the earliest group of constructive theologians—mainly white men— there were questions about the intellectual rigor of liberation theology, espe- cially black liberation theology.This concern for rigor, and the embrace of some early white feminist theologians, who often used philosophical arguments in their work, suggest a type of onto-epistemological problem of blackness, which has not yet been overcome in constructive theology, as narrated by Wyman. Not to mention that no womanist/black feminist theologians are engaged in a meaningful way, despite the fact that three offer constructive proposals in the third book Constructive Theology—M. Shawn Copeland, Barbara Holmes, and Karen Baker-Fletcher, and have written books on their proposals. It is an important issue for Wyman throughout the book to see if “constructive theol- ogy successfully departs from liberal theology” (xxxi). On the issue of race and the failure of liberal theology, constructive theology as he describes it seems burdened by the same problem (133).
Deepening this concern about the inability to fully overcome the privileg- ing of certain onto-epistemological dispositions, the text has no reference to Pentecostal-related theologians though Wyman says that within this broad umbrella of constructive theology, issues of “pneumatology … and dialogue with other religions,” are increasingly important (180). Immediately, the work of Amos Yong comes to mind as a Pentecostal theologian who has embraced process philosophy, has constructed a pneumatological imagination for the expressed purpose of both constructing pneumatology, and retrieving the Christian tradition in novel ways, as well as a concern about what this means for comparative theology and interreligious dialogue. In fact, there is a grow- ing, if small body of literature by theologians working in what may broadly be understood as Pentecostal and Charismatic traditions who articulate or would
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resonate with Wyman’s definition of constructive theology. For example, see Constructive Pneumatological Hermeneutics in Pentecostal Christianity(2016).
Finally, the text is fundamentally the publication of Wyman’s 2016 disser- tation from Union Theological Seminary. It is unclear how much revision took place, and at some points the work was quiteredundant and appears to be more committed to a type of comprehensiveness at the lack of coherence. But this may not be too surprising, given constructive theology’s resistance to system- atic theology’s commitments and dogmatic theology’s priorities.
Overall,Wyman has offered a useful history and framing of the discourse and practice of what is marked as constructive theology. His work is sure to offer an important baseline of analysis for those who seek to frame their work in this way going forward.
Marlon Millner
Northwestern University, Evanston, Illinois [email protected]
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