Mariña, Jacqueline

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Korean Catholic religious sisters—those who distribute communion solelyaccording to the directions of the priest and who are prohibited from enteringthe sanctuary to receive the elements—refuse to participate in the Eucharisticministry. As an alternative, she explores a model for a women’s churchthrough the lives of Korean Catholic women martyrs.A Filipina theologian, Agnes Brazil, who advocates the decriminalization ofprostitution, makes another far-reaching proposal. According to Brazil, boththe current state policy and the teaching of the church in the Philippines donot address the root problem behind prostitution: extreme poverty forceswomen to engage in prostitution. Thus, church and state nonsensically blameand punish the prostitute, perpetuating a status quo that makes women evenmore vulnerable to abuse and marginalization. Approaching the matterthrough the genre of tragedy, Brazil advocates the decriminalization of prosti-tution. Defining decriminalization as “penalizing pimping and the manage-ment of brothels, but not the sale and purchase of sexual service itself, as wellas, the right of women in prostitution to organize” (3–4), she argues that it is aChristian duty to protect the victim and the powerless, which in this case areprostitutes.As a first collection of Asian Catholic feminist theologians, EWA, presentsvastly diverse issues and contexts of Asian Catholic women, coupled withfeminist visions for the church. The significance of the book in Asian theologyand Asian feminist theology cannot be overemphasized, but there is an import-ant question that the authors still need to ask; to wit, who are their conver-sation partners? In over 600 footnotes from twenty-eight chapters, other Asianwomen theologians or feminist theologians from the two-thirds world, whohave been wrestling similar concerns in different contexts, are hardlymentioned. In contrast, the work of Western feminist theologians and Asianmale theologians are widely quoted by almost every author.Asian feminist theology is mostly identified with Asian Protestant theology,which points to the significance of this book by and about Asian Catholicwomen theologians. However, the authors should ask whether Asian Catholicfeminist theology benefits by being standoffish to its Asian Protestant sisters.Alternatively, Asian Catholic women theologians should ask whether AudreLorde’s finding is on point: “The master’s tools will never dismantle themaster’s house” (Audre Lorde, Sister Outside. Crossing, 1984).doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfl046 Boyung LeeAdvance Access publication February 15, 2007 Pacific School of ReligionFriedrich Schleiermacher: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism. ByRichard Crouter. Cambridge University Press, 2005. 277 pages. $80.00.That history—not only in the form of the lived experience of a writer, butalso the history of the appropriation of a text—should be of supreme200 Journal of the American Academy of Religion at Purdue University Libraries ADMN on December 31, 2015http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from importance in grasping the meaning of a body of work, is a theme that runsthroughout Richard Crouter’s book on Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768–1834),arguably the most significant Christian theologian since the middle ages.Exploring several facets of Schleiermacher’s oeuvre, the book investigates“religious debates and questions within the complex details of personal, social,and institutional history” (9). Schleiermacher’s influence, however, extendedbeyond the field of theology: he made lasting contributions to philosophy, inparticular, in the fields of hermeneutics and the theory of knowledge.Significantly, Crouter makes use of Schleiermacher’s own insights intohermeneutics in an effort to understand him. Schleiermacher stressed theineradicably subjective and perspectival element present in all apprehensionsand expressions of human knowledge. Hence, it is important to situate aperson’s utterances in their historical context in order to understand them.This situating is the task of Crouter’s book: Schleiermacher’s work ispositioned not only in relation to his own life and practice, but in relation tothe thought and practice of both his contemporaries and that of later thinkers,who were in some way influenced by him. Furthermore, Schleiermacher’s“cultural location between Enlightenment and Romanticism” (1) is explored.The first and last chapters frame the common themes of the book. In thefirst chapter, “Revisiting Dilthey on Schleiermacher and Biography,” Crouterdiscusses the general question of whether biography, and hence the context ofa life and the way that it has been lived, is important to understanding a bodyof work. Dilthey had claimed that this was especially true in the case ofSchleiermacher: unlike Kant, Schleiermacher’s significance could only begrasped through his biography. Yet, Crouter not only examines claims aboutSchleiermacher’s personal impact, but also provides an analysis ofSchleiermacher’s own position on the relevance of life for understanding abody of work. Significantly, he quotes Schleiermacher: “No writing can be fullyunderstood except in connection with the total range of ideas out of which ithas come into being and through a knowledge of the various relations import-ant to the writers’ lives of those for whom they write” (32). In the last chapterof his book, on the other hand, Crouter discusses the relevance of the historyof a text’s effects, its Wirkungsgeschichte, in assessing the text’s meaning. Inthis case, the issue is not the history and context of the origin of a work, butrather the history of its reception. What is it that makes a text, in this caseSchleiermacher’s On Religion, a classic? Crouter cites Francis Watson’s dictumthat “the significance of a text takes time to unfold” (249). As such, along withKierkegaard’s Johannes Climacus we can affirm that our access to the historyof a text’s effects privileges our position in accessing its meaning. So Crouter:“…we have not grasped the underlying force of the stream that animates thesevarious rivulets [of a text’s effective power] until we ourselves witness thetemporal unfolding of his [Schleiermacher’s] significance” (266). However,while he affirms the “relative” truth of Watson’s dictum, Crouter claims thataccess to this Wirkungsgeschichte is no substitute for letting the text itself workimmediately upon the reader. Ultimately, argues Crouter, our interest in classicBook Reviews 201 at Purdue University Libraries ADMN on December 31, 2015http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from texts such as On Religion lies in “its immediate power, in its claims to replicateand refocus the world of the reader in ways that destroy time” (267).Framed by the two hermeneutical problems discussed above, the book isdivided into three parts. The first is entitled “Taking the Measure ofSchleiermacher.” Chapters in this section place Schleiermacher’s work in thecontext of the social, political, religious, and intellectual concerns of hiscontemporaries or near contemporaries. Chapter two, “Schleiermacher,Mendelssohn, and the Enlightenment,” compares themes common toMendelssohn’s Jerusalem (1783) and Schleiermacher’s On Religion (1799),especially in the context of the thorny problem of the relation between thecoercive power of states and religious communities and the freedom of con-science required for the expression of all genuine religion. The third chapter,“Hegel and Schleiermacher at Berlin,” not only analyzes the tense relationshipbetween Hegel and Schleiermacher in terms of the political realities of the day,but also provides an acute analysis of fundamental differences between the twothinkers. Two stand out especially. First, unlike Hegel, Schleiermacher deniesthe possibility of absolute knowledge. Second, he denies that all elements ofour experience can be mediated by consciousness. His stand on both questionsresults from his insistence on the finite and perspectival character of all humanknowings. Crouter discusses Schleiermacher’s March 1810 speech before theacademy, in which he “spoke against systematic philosophy and in favor of thehistorical-critical approach to philosophy as appropriate to be represented inthe academy” (87). We have no access to absolute knowledge. Rather, knowl-edge is the result of the rule-governed interplay of the different perspectives offinite human selves standing in interrelation with the world. As such, ourknowing is inter-subjective as well as historically conditioned, and this factshould be reflected in our approach to the discipline of philosophy. The fourthchapter, “Kierkegaard’s not so hidden debt to Schleiermacher,” explores thedialogical character of Schleiermacher’s understanding of human knowing.Knowledge occurs in and through the interplay of several different historicallyconditioned perspectives in conversation with one another. There are “formalas well a substantive concerns” uniting Kierkegaard and Schleiermacher (103);Kierkegaard’s use of pseudonymous authorship certainly stands in debt toSchleiermacher’s literary endeavors, especially his Confidential LettersConcerning Schlegel’s “Lucinde,” where, in Kierkegaard’s words, Schleiermacher“constructs a host of personalities,” and through them we are acquainted withtheir “individuality” and “various point of view” concerning Schlegel’scontroversial book (111). Through the play of various points of view, humanunderstanding is exhibited and achieved.Part two of the book is entitled “Signposts of a Public Theologian.” Here,Crouter provides an analysis of the way that Schleiermacher puts his thoughtinto action in the wider public and political arena. The fifth chapter, on theletters Schleiermacher wrote on the question of the emancipation of the Jews,echoes some of the more theoretical political concerns discussed in chaptertwo. Chapter six, “A Proposal for a New Berlin University,” picks up on some202 Journal of the American Academy of Religion at Purdue University Libraries ADMN on December 31, 2015http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from of the themes touched upon earlier in the chapter on Schleiermacher andHegel at Berlin, and explores how Schleiermacher’s understanding of the char-acter of human knowledge influenced his shaping of the institutional characterof the university of Berlin. Of special importance is chapter seven,“Schleiermacher and the theology of a bourgeois Society,” taking issue withmany contemporary readings of Schleiermacher that portray him as a “culturalaccommodationist” (172). Crouter rightly points out that such an understand-ing of him is far too simplistic, acutely noting that “since cultural forces areinevitably diverse and complex, we must always ask which forces are beingjoined and for what reasons, and also, against what other forces” (181).Crouter’s analysis provides a much-needed corrective to Barthian caricatures ofSchleiermacher, which have been repeated over and over again in the second-ary literature, and he convincingly shows that Schleiermacher “made politicalchoices that must be judged to be on the side of progressive social change”(171).Common to the last section of the book, “Textual Readings andMilestones,” is the theme of how Schleiermacher’s view of religion influencedhis understanding of hermeneutics, and the role this played in revising his ownwork. The ideas expressed in On Religion are foundational to all ofSchleiermacher’s work, especially the idea that “linguistic expression … cannever fully and immediately grasp reality” (200). Nevertheless, all expressionsand actions are fundamentally affected by the person’s relation to Being, towhich one stands in a relation of immediate and absolute dependence. Hence,every linguistic community both reveals and conceals Being; a classic textfunctions as a prism refracting reality in multivalent ways and is, thereby, inex-haustibly rich. In his chapter on Schleiermacher’s revision of The ChristianFaith, Crouter discusses Schleiermacher’s theory of language, “in which doc-trine rests on and refers back to more immediate, preconscious levels of experi-ence” (239). These preconscious levels of experience are reflected most directlyin the poetic or rhetorical dimensions of language, and only later in dogmaticexpressions. This sheds light on Schleiermacher’s grasp of theology as a field ofstudy, explored by Crouter in chapter nine: practical theology is the crown oftheology. All theoretical reflection must be rooted in experience; the under-standing of experience only gains its significance in relation to the practicalsphere, where judgments regarding an appreciation of the worth or importanceof things have a direct effect on action. The insight that all purely intellectualjudgments or beliefs derive their significance from their relation to what isvalued and its impact on action underlies Schleiermacher’s claim that practicaltheology is the “crown” of theology.Many of the themes explored in this book can profitably be summed upunder the heading of the primacy of the practical in the understanding of lifeand thought. Crouter deftly interweaves the theme of Schleiermacher’s ownunderstanding of the relation of life to thought with an analysis of the actualways in which Schleiermacher’s ideas shaped his actions in the public arena.The book is an important contribution, not only to the growing field ofBook Reviews 203 at Purdue University Libraries ADMN on December 31, 2015http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from Schleiermacher scholarship, but also to the history of philosophy and theology.Crouter’s most lasting contribution is the way his book exhibits why life andthought must be taken together, not only to take the proper measure of a greatthinker, but to understand the meaning of his thought as well.doi:10.1093/jaarel/lfl047 Jacqueline MariñaAdvance Access publication January 29, 2007 Purdue UniversityFaithful Economics: The Moral Worlds of a Neutral Science. Edited byJames W. Henderson and John Pisciotta. Baylor University Press, 2005.155 pages. $29.95.Perhaps the largest gathering ever of economists assembled to pursue therelationship between their work as economists and their profession asChristians occurred at Baylor University’s 2002 conference on “Christianityand Economics: Integrating Faith and Learning in Economic Scholarship.” Aconventional array of concurrent sessions, using the Judeo-Christian moraltradition to frame economically related policy emphases and/or theoreticalconstructs (hereinafter FDI for faith-discipline integration), was complementedby seven plenary addresses. Reworked versions of these addresses comprise thechapters of Faithful Economics; an Introduction and Conclusion by the confer-ence organizers and FE editors complete the book.Assigning historian George Marsden, the first address/chapter reveals oneconference objective—establishing the legitimacy of FDI work within thenormal routines of the modern research university. Claiming no expertise ineconomics, Marsden generalizes his experience within history to other disci-plines: the modern research university marginalizes and trivializes religion as auseful source for uncovering truth about the world and how to act within it.Working from Wolterstorff’s epistemology, Marsden argues that one’sfoundational commitments/worldview cannot help but inform the theoreticalconstructs used and the policy implications proposed—a reality as true offeminists and Marxists (which the academy welcomes) as religiously groundedscholarship (which the academy shuns). A two-fold general counsel followed:(1) high-level FDI scholarship requires grounding in the intellectual dimen-sions of one’s religious heritage (Calvinism, Roman Catholicism, Anabaptism,and so on), requiring fresh professional effort for most economists; (2) withinthe academy, present one’s FDI-informed analysis in ways scholars from allworldviews can understand.Interestingly, the three Christian economists writing chapters proffer littlesupport from their experience for Marsden’s characterization of the modernacademy. Judith Dean (U.S. International Trade Commission) finds useful hisspecific guidelines for doing FDI work: let one’s faith inform choice ofproblem for analysis and questions asked, push the analysis to discern theimpacts upon real people, and test the philosophical presuppositions of204 Journal of the American Academy of Religion at Purdue University Libraries ADMN on December 31, 2015http://jaar.oxfordjournals.org/Downloaded from 

Friedrich Schleiermacher: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism. By Richard Crouter

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Friedrich Schleiermacher: Between Enlightenment and Romanticism. By Richard Crouter

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