Abstract
In this substantial volume Asle Eikrem from the Norwegian School of Theology develops a tightly argued analysis of sacrifice, love and violence in the context of Christian theology. He examines the doctrinal tradition from New Testament times to the present, through modern and postmodern perspectives, drawing on succeeding cultural and philosophical shifts to create a constructive systematic account of love within the interstices of the classical doctrinal loci from creation to eschatology. The reader is invited to a conversation with the great and the good, the less great and the moderately good, in sharp dissection of existing literature—gift, sacrifice and violence from Levinas to Milbank. The discussions around Anselm and Luther, Hegel, contemporary European theology, and the American emancipatory theologies, are enlightening. Considerable, welcome attention is given to the work of women theologians.
There are at least two reasons why Eikrem’s work will likely become required reading for any serious theological researcher into the love of God in the future. First the author unfolds a truly comprehensive appreciation of the vast range of studies relevant to his subject beyond the shores of Anglo-Saxon insularity, particularly but not exclusively in the Lutheran Protestant tradition (for light from Rahner, Schillebeeckx, Roger Haight et al. we shall have to look elsewhere.) But second and principally, here is a fresh and detailed argument which construes the logic of self-giving as the underlying dynamic of Christian faith in church and society, grounded in Trinity and resurrection. We may initially think sacrifice as ultimate non sacrifice somewhat contrived. This is a matter not of perspective but of ontological transfiguration.
‘While fundamentally valuable qualities of our token relationships may be temporarily lost coram mundo/hominibus, they are never lost coram deo. This does not mean that self-sacrificial love is a refusal of human finitude, but the affirmation of finitude as always unfolding within the relational dynamic of divine life’ (p. 245).
Readers may hesitate slightly about the roles of some among the cloud of witnesses adduced. More thought is given to divine love than to human love. And the price of the volume is unconscionable. But this book should be a clear priority for a college or university library.