If Jürgen Moltmann and Brené Brown collaborated on a book, what might emerge is something like Elizabeth Gandolfo’s The Power and Vulnerability of Love. The volume is framed as a theological anthropology, and it is that: a consideration of what human beings are, with reference to who their creative, redeeming, and sustaining God is. But this, Gandolfo’s first book, is not just an anthropology. It also offers a statement about God that is its more daring and abidingly important gift.
Perhaps this is true of all theological anthropologies: in order to say something insightful about the kinds of creatures human beings are, one must say something about who God is, and because God is more interesting than we are, the theologian’s claims about divinity will always be the most arresting part of the project.
Read Full Article »