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Christology in cultural perspectiveHow we see JesusCHRISTOLOGY IN CULTURAL PERSPECTIVE This book seeks to analyse the interaction between Christology and culture at different stages of world and intellectual history. Colin Greene suggests that three main Christological trajectories have dominated this history: cosmological (Jesus as the eternal logos); political (Jesus as Lord) and anthropological (Jesus as representative exemplar). He argues that this third type consisted of certain strands which would come to dominate the Enlightenment reduction of Christology to simply the quest of the historical Jesus. After outlining these three main approaches, the rest of the book is an analysis of what Christology has looked like in modernity and then in postmodernity. Greene's aim is both to show that certain cultural paradigms have always shaped the way Christology has been constructed from the biblical text, and to critique the presuppositions and method of these constructions. This is not a bedside read - it is a demanding academic book which would probably function best as a course text-book for third year or postgraduate theology students engaged in a detailed study of Christology. For anyone studying in environments where figures such as Schleiermacher, Tillich, and Lessing are looked on favourably as having done significant damage to Christian orthodoxy, Greene's book will provide some indicators of how to formulate a response. It contains an excellent explanation of the causes of the Enlightenment (which Greene helpfully distinguishes from modernity) and shows clearly the impact Enlightenment thought had on the approach to theology. This impact is still felt today in the examples of Christology and human liberation (liberation theology) and Christology and Gender (feminist theology) as both largely operate with the Enlightenment myth of human emancipation, although in these sections I found myself with plenty of questions for Greene and not always in wholehearted agreement. More questions arise when Greene moves from description to suggestions about ways forward. His aim is not simply to show the connections between Christology and culture or to lament the fact that Christianity no longer grasps the public imagination of the western world; rather he wants to show how postmodernism is both an opportunity and threat to the recovery of Christian faith and belief in society. At one point he cites Karl Barth's assertion that modernism's view of humanity and God is nothing more than a modern manifestation of Adam's sin. Overall I couldn't help feeling that this kind of profound simplicity is largely lost in Greene's highly sophisticated approach to engaging with culture and his view of postmodernism as opportunity and threat. The threat could be defined more clearly in terms of sin and rebellion, the opportunity more clearly in terms of openings for the gospel. This is not to say that Greene's suggestions of ways forward are not important and constructive, but simply that his focus on the re-construction of history, language and religion make this a book for the academy. Some serious digesting is required to translate Greene's concerns and proposals into the world that most of us inhabit every day. David Gibson,
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