Reconciliation: Restoring Justice.

Reconciliation: Restoring Justice. By John W. De Gruchy. Minneapolis: Fortress, 2002. 255 pages. Paper. $19.00.

South African theologian De Gruchy, a noted Bonhoeffer scholar, shows how political ramifications can be drawn from the gospel itself when it is understood as offering reconciliation between God and ourselves, us and others, and us and creation. He contends that the gospel cannot be limited to personal piety or church traditions. Rather, the restoration of justice is drawn from God's justification with its renewal in interpersonal relations and social transformation. Justification is not primarily forensic, as Protestants tend to hold, but restorative to society and the earth.

His work is structured in three parts: (1) Discourse, which deals with the lexicon and grammar of reconciliation, (2) Agency, which shows how reconciliation can be embodied through dialogue, and (3) Process and Goal, which describes truthful interfacing between victim and victimizer. Much of De Gruchy's work is done in the context of the aftermath of apartheid and the quest for a democratic transition in South Africa. It is also done with the hope that the Abrahamic traditions of Judaism, Christianity, and Islam might find greater cooperation and appreciation.

De Gruchy well recognizes that "reconciliation" will not be the return to an ideal past, which of course did not exist. However, it can happen in Christ (p. 17) who opens us to the possibility of listening to the voice of the other (p. 16); this latter experience can bring about reconciliation. Truth then happens as we remember the past and relate it to the present (p. 23). Reconciliation can be seen as fourfold: (1) theological, between God and humanity, (2) interpersonal, as can be seen in a marriage, (3) social, in which alienation between communities is overcome, and (4) political, which could happen were improvement to be found in Ireland, the Middle East, and South Africa. In this regard, we must note that Paul's doctrine of justification offers not a new doctrine but a new movement. Christ's death is vicarious, not penal. Likewise, ethics is to be developed not in the conflict between good and evil but in reconciliation (p. 73). In the church we are with each other and for each other (p. 95).

Law is clearly the form of the gospel, here, as it was for Barth. Can law and gospel be unified by means of a "monarchic" reason--even here in its mode of actio? Should we not rather claim that justice is to justification as love is to faith--and thereby preserve the promise from being transformed into ethical directives? We would not need to worry that such a view would privatize faith, because the gospel is ever and only mediated through physical, cultural, and institutional realities--the church as a social gathering, sacraments as bodily words. If we were to accept this trajectory of distinguishing, not separating, law and gospel, we could acknowledge two types of righteousness, one by faith in God's promise against the law as accusing and the other the task of restoring community in light of law and creation. This latter move would preserve the gospel as promise and permit the gospel to unleash love manifest as comparable to our Lord. For this reviewer, one certainly can and should accept the ethical goals for which De Gruchy is striving, though as law, not gospel.

Mark C. Mattes

Grand View College

Des Moines, Iowa