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Gene Robinson - In the Eye of the Storm

  
     

In the Eye of the Storm by Gene Robinson

Book Type: Paperback
Published: 28 March 2008
Publisher: Canterbury Press Norwich
RRP:£12.99

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Review:
I too was warmed by the engaging and heart warming person that I meet in this book. Those who have been hurt and wounded by inappropriate responses to their sexuality can learn much from the author. As an exploration of the human condition it is achingly honest, and inspiring in the firm resolution to `hang on in there' no matter what. Regretfully though, if it is read as a book based on Christian foundations it is somewhat weak, and in places very misleading. To take a simple and minor example, on page 128 he declares "The United States was founded by people escaping theocracies in Europe". Ironically the United States was founded by people seeking to establish theocracies in their so called New World. It cannot be said that there was a single theocracy in Europe anywhere near the time of the emigrations to the States. Much more seriously, the author writes what appears to a fabulous chapter (8) on the cross which at the end hugely disappoints. For him the cross would appear to be an act by God of solidarity with human suffering, which it is. It is also perhaps, though the author doesn't make this explicit, a demonstration of love without limits. Both of these understandings of the cross are vital but secondary to the traditional teachings of all mainstream Christian churches over two millennia. The disappointment lies in his complete omission of the cross as the place of sacrifice. This notion of sacrifice can be a deeply offensive notion to the modern ear, for it asserts that all humans have failings, and these can only be dealt with, by God, on our behalf. The sacrifice of the cross is the place of the transaction. Sadly we live in an age of growing denial of the seriousness of our failings, and complete unwillingness to explore sacrifice as a place of restoration and indeed healing. The gospels in the New Testament make this work of the cross clear from the lips of Jesus himself; the letters of the NT explain this with many metaphors; and the letter to the Hebrews describes the cross as the culmination and final act of the sacrificial process of at-one-making. Most regretfully Gene Robinson omits this key and definitive theology from his book, and indeed omits the key passages from the NT. Also seriously, the author all too often undermines the reliability of the Christian scriptures. eg he describes the many grievous faults of the church over the centuries, and rather than see these as departures from scripture, or manipulations of scripture, he describes them as the consequences of the scriptures. He then asserts that these errors were put right by modern understandings of scripture when in fact they (slavery, exploitation, theocracy, misogyny et al) were corrected from within traditional understandings of scripture. For the author modern human reasoning is put above the steadiness of scripture. History shows that when this approach is taken error and calamity follow. The book is also somewhat dated. It reads as a treatise in Liberation Theology. This theology has a serious pedigree of some 40 years in the catholic countries of Latin America. Its huge strength is its insistence that God seeks to help everyone from their place of persecution and oppression to the freedom of their Promised Land. It was and is viciously attacked by the wealthy and powerful of central and southern America, and for understandable reasons. This can be described as the horizontal element of salvation theology. The weakness of this theology, and the reason for opposition from the Vatican, is that there is a prior and more important vertical element to the journey, for each human being is called to travel from their broken and lonely present spiritual palce, into the promised land which is the loving presence of their heavenly father, ie the divine. This can be described as the vertical element of salvation theology. Whilst Gene Robinson writes eloquently and passionately and importantly about the horizontal element, he is somewhat weak on the vertical.