Flesh Made Word

Can we be touched by a text without 'touching' it? Answers from Enlightened reason and classic Protestant revelation say no. Yes, I myself can interpret a text, led by reason and the Spirit, but only if I don't touch it with my self. Only if I suppress life experiences and leave behind no threads of cultural clothing. And yet, Lauren Smelser White deftly argues--weaving in a "thread" or two from Derrida--the goal of immaculate objectivity makes embodied, transforming revelation implausible. It insulates us from the risks of divine giving and receiving. What is needed are communal, personal interpretive practices receptive to God's receptivity to us. This is a high view of scripture's openness to our erring, suffering, responsive flesh. White's dialogues with Barth, von Balthasar, Sarah Coakley, and Louis-Marie Chauvet, direct us toward an embodied, ecumenical hermeneutic of God's nurturing, just, and boundless Word.

One of the brightest among a new generation of theologians, Lauren Smelser White is both deeply committed to Christianity's biblical basis and poignantly aware of how pervasive textual fundamentalism has long inhibited the revelatory, redemptive power of the Word of God for individuals and denominational communities. Her expert, balanced review of the strengths and weaknesses in 20th-century Protestant scholarship opens into an astute enlistment of more recent fundamental theologians--notably feminist and sacramental--to propose a full-bodied comprehension of divine revelation as a Spirit-guided, shared communal event.