Serious Fun Fall 2001

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Jesus Symbol of God, Roger Haight, S.J. (Orbis, 1999), 505 pp.

I'll admit it-I was seduced by the controversy. I rushed out to buy Roger Haight's Jesus Symbol of God-after it had been in bookstores for nearly a year. Though the book had been widely discussed in theological circles, Jesus Symbol of God didn't draw attention from the popular press-or from me-until April 2001, when the Boston Globe revealed that the Vatican had barred the book's writer, Jesuit theologian Roger Haight, from teaching.

I bought the last copy of Jesus Symbol of God in the bookstore.

One can imagine that the title alone-implying Jesus is a mere symbol of ultimate reality-would get Haight in trouble. Indeed, Haight does suggest that God's love and grace can come through religions other than Christianity. But in the end, Haight is not as radical as this provocative title suggests: he barely steps over, with academic delicacy, a line that many modern Catholic theologians flirt with on a daily basis.

As with so many books, the most important contribution Jesus Symbol of God makes is in the questions Haight frames and the framework he proposes for answering them: In the close quarters of postmodern religious diversity, what should Christians make of their traditional notions of salvation? How should Christians view other religions' ideas of salvation? Haight, of course, offers his own answers to these questions-answers he says should not offend "postmodern sensibilities." But first Haight provides readers with the language and background needed to address these and other questions of pluralism (including an excellent and much-needed definition of pluralism itself).

I imagine the Vatican is now hard at work prepping a latter-day Augustine or Aquinas to meet ...

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