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Book Review: Probing the Foundations: A Study in Theistic Reconstruction. By David A. Pailin. Kampen, the Netherlands: Kok Pharos Publishing House, 1994, ix-243 pp

The brief introduction and concluding summary of each chapter are a helpful pedagogical aid. The author’s contact with the Third World has given him a sensitivity to the issues raised by the theologies of liberation, and indeed, they have shaped much of his reflection on his chosen theme. The arguments in favour of approaching the Kingdom from a liberation hermeneutic are set out in chapter 5. Two other options (Kingdom as concept and symbol) are set out more briefly. Fuellenbach suggests that the dialogue partner of First World exegesis has been, consciously or unconsciously, the unbeliever, while the concern of liberation theology has been how to address the person who has been dehumanised, reduced to a non-person by the crushing forces of exploitation and poverty (p. 57). This approach, he notes, does not regard its hermeneutics simply as one option among others for reading the Bible. It claims that it is the only way the Bible can be read, if it is to be read correctly at all (p. 60). More helpful, however, is the recognition that no single model can be used exclusively in reflecting theologically on the Kingdom, but that such an elusive term needs to be open to an interplay between several different models. What reservations I have about this excellent book concern some specific features of Fuellenbach’s use of some parts of the biblical material and his reconstruction of the social world of both testaments. I raise them tentatively, for I recognize that he is not writing for a specialist audience. Biblical theology, even at the pastoral level, does need to be in constant dialogue with the hard edge of exegesis and history. One of the strengths of liberation theology has been its retrieval of the central importance for Christianity of the saving story of the Old Testament. Paradoxically, its rediscovery of the centrality of the Exodus story as the archetypal act of liberation has coincided with the breakdown of a scholarly consensus on the nature and origin of the Pentateuch. It is commonplace today to say that that consensus is in disarray. Nor does a more coherent picture of premonarchical Israelite society emerge from recent archaeology. For reasons such as these, the idealization of early Israel as a democratic, egalitarian society which has become commonplace in some contributions to liberation theology and which is reproduced very briefly here, seems historically questionable, or at least unverifiable. By the same token, there is little evidence in historical sources such as Josephus to suggest that Galilee was a hotbed of revolution and Jesus’ kingdom language was a spiritualizing and a deepening of a political term common in his own own time (p. 215 &dquo;The origin of Jesus’ message of the Kingdom&dquo;). Recent scholarship, for example, would place the emergence of the Zealot movement after the time of Jesus and well into the time of the Church, probably shortly before the outbreak of the Jewish War in 65. Pen portraits of the figures mentioned in the Infancy Narratives on the basis of the words ascribed to them there would also require some nuancing if they are to be faithful to the very special character of these chapters. While there is a good and very full survey of many aspects of the life of Jesus, the resurrection gets surprisingly scant treatment. These reservations notwithstanding, this book deserves to be widely used, and will prove a valuable resource to teachers and students.