Christ: The Self-Emptying of God.

Lucien Richard's thesis is straightforward: the theological category of kenosis (self-emptying) is an extremely useful resource for correlating the meaning of Jesus Christ with the human condition. He uses a dose reading of the classic text in Philippians 2 as well as a consideration of the Gospel of Mark (which he reads as a kind of commentary on the text from Philippians) to emphasize a "kenotic" understanding of Jesus Christ. Salvation and well-being are "attained not by conquest, but by self-effacement and self-giving love....Real authority and real power lie in compassionate love, in choosing weakness instead of strength."

Richard's admiration for this approach derives largely from his judgment that the classical formulation of the Council of Chalcedon that Jesus Christ as "two natures united in one person" is too abstract. Chalcedon lacks the power, paradox, and open-endness that characterize, for example, the narrative Christology of Mark. To Karl Rahner's famous question about whether there is Christology after Chalcedon, Richard gives a definite yes. A kenotic Christology is able to hold in tension two elements: power (Christ is the Son of God) and powerlessness (Christ lives in the human condition).

Richard applies his kenotic Christology to a wide range of theological issues. Creation is seen as self-emptying (one hears the process voices of Hartshorne and Whitehead here); the Trinity as self-giving, both in its immanent and economic life, as is the relationship of the Cross and the Resurrection. Finally, Richard offers a vision of the kenotic church where power is given and dispersed rather than consolidated and exercised. The implications of this view of Christology for social justice are patent. Richard's picture of Jesus Christ represents the compassionate face of God who is self-giving in creation, in revelation, in the Incarnation, and in the church.

I suspect that parts of this book have a long history. The opening chapter, with its analysis of the human condition, has a very dated ring to it; it was like a march down memory lane as one listens to the voices of Langdon Gilkey, Ernest Becker, E. F. Schumacher, E. Fromm, Christopher Lasch, Herbert Marcuse, and other iconic voices of the 1960s and 1970s. Nor do the endnotes (sigh) reveal references for anything written after the late 1980s for any of the other chapters. The book has no bibliography and there is a barely adequate index. The only erratum I noticed is that the distinguished British exegete, Morna Hooker, became, throughout, Monica Hooker. This volume, in short, though useful, needed some updating, especially in the first chapter.

Lawrence S. Cunningham teaches theology at the University of Notre Dame.