Self and Salvation. Being Transformed

Self and Salvation. Being Transformed. By David F. Ford. Cambridge Studies in Christian Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. xiv + 298 pp. $64.95 (cloth); $22.95 (paper).

David F. Ford, currently Regius Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, will be known to many as the editor of the textbook The Modern Theologians. His latest offering, Self and Salvation, is not a textbook, but a delightful and thought-provoking essay. His main dialogue partners are Emmanuel Levinas, Eberhard Jungel and Paul Ricoeur, in conversation with whom he develops an idea of the self under the transforming process of salvation, centering on the theme of "facing" in relation to others, and principally in relation to the face of Christ.

Ford provides a feast of approaches to this theme-philosophical, theological, hermeneutical, biblical, practical and historical-with the aim of describing a "polyphony" before the face of God. Such polyphony reflects the divine "economy of superabundance" in numerous irreducibly particular ways. This particularity is structured by the logic of "facing," a logic which is Trinitarian. In facing the other I am both drawn out in responsibility to the other and united with the other in joy. Unity precedes differentiation, as the ethical imperative towards the other is formative both of my relationship to the other and of my selfhood. This Trinitarian ethic of selfhood is not original, but is derived from Jungel, and Levinas and Ricoeur read in dialogue with Jungel. Rather, Ford's original claim is that "facing" can become the basis for a theology of salvation rather than merely its application; it is the form of salvation inseparable from its content. He takes us on a "journey of intensification" through the thought of Levinas, Jungel and Ricoeur (in Part I) and then shows facing at work: in the book of Ephesians, the practice of the Lord's supper, the person and work of Jesus, and finally in the lives of two Christian witnesses, Therese of Lisieux and Bonhoeffer (in Part II). The particularity of human facing in each of these situations is shown to be intrinsically bound up with the communication of the universal truth of God.

The difficulty with this book is in its effusive and "suggestive" character, which takes us in many fascinating directions, but may leave us rather confused. Ford has deliberately shaped the book in this way, both to maintain what he sees as an appropriate "particularity" and superabundance, as against a "totalising" or reductive message, and to take us on a diverse journey of discovery through a number of different figures and ideas. He provides a clear exposition of the ideas that he covers, but the goal of intensifying particularity is somewhat lost among all the multiplicity. Perhaps an earlier and more deliberate focus on "facing Christ" (chapter 7) would be helpful. In this chapter, Ford engages in a brilliant discussion of the face of Christ, which, he suggests, reveals God by intensifying others' particularity, rather than reducing them to universality. This, in my view, is the most powerful part of the book, but it appears on the scene as one idea among many, when it needs to be the central thread running throughout.

EDWARD HOWELLS

University of Birmingham Birmingham, England

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