The key question that Christoph Schwöbel raises in Christlicher Glaube im Pluralismus is one that has emerged as an imperative. A Christian theology responsible to the contemporary realities of pluralism must enter its theological analysis of the global situation of Christian faith into wider discussions of culture. Theologians cannot abdicate their role in articulating their distinctive ways of schematizing reality. They cannot shy away from making truth claims amid other competitors, and they cannot give up on the question of unity—whether metaphysical, ethical, or eschatological—while celebrating difference. Christoph Schwöbel, professor of systematic theology at the Eberhard Karls Universität Tübingen, Germany since 2004, dares to respond to this imperative. In this recent collection of essays, he enters into the pluralist conversation with a commitment to the trinitarian centerpiece of Christianity, which he fleshes out with considerable knowledge of the Western European Christian theological and philosophical tradition.

Pluralism is a complex subject. The global diversity of cultures, the multiple religious trajectories of Christianity in diverse relations with each other, and the interplay between secular and religious tendencies in the modern West (with their implications for the world), are among the many faces of pluralism. Schwöbel sustains a theological gaze on these many faces, offering a collection of studies that are decisively unapologetic in view of the trinitarian “determining horizon of Christian faith”¹

and decidedly realist in view of metaphysical commitment. A book that places the Trinity on the center-stage of discussions of pluralism is to be welcomed on a theological stage that has tended to relegate apologetically its two central dogmas (Trinity and Christology) to the wings of metaphysical idealist speculation.

The Trinity is Schwöbel's particular Christian doctrinal key for analyzing the plurality of the contemporary world and of Christian churches. He writes that pluralism is “the signature of our life-world”²

and that global Christianity is a pluralistically differentiated religion. Pluralism poses the question of mediation between the one and the many. Schwöbel chooses this ancient Greek philosophical conundrum to capture the central intellectual problem of pluralism. He wants to acknowledge both real diversity in the contemporary world without losing sight of attendant metaphysical and hermeneutically relevant questions (for example, the question of truth and the mutual understanding of concepts). Schwöbel formulates the question of unity without succumbing to the monarchianism and totalitarianism characterizing many Western notions of unity. The perfect subject and model for the mediation between one and many is, from the Christian perspective, the Trinity. Schwöbel privileges this doctrine because Christians claim the triune God as the divine reality at the center of Christian life and worship. The Christian understanding of its God is the key to understanding the reality of the world, and in particular of the world's radical plurality.

This decisively confessional approach to Christian theology dovetails with that of major proponents of Reformation thought. But Schwöbel's contribution to theological history is more than recapitulation of the past. If his (and others, for example American neo-liberals') diagnosis of pluralism is correct, that is, that modern society is characterized not by secularization but by religious flowering,³

then religious claims can be made without apology in the public sphere from distinct religious perspectives. Hence the Trinity appears in interreligious, interdisciplinary, and ecumenical dialogue as the Christian analytical key for understanding the one and the many in religion and culture. There need be no liberal shyness regarding the distinctiveness of the Christian voice in order to advance democratic dialogue, but as Schwöbel boldly writes, “the more religious, the more tolerance.”⁴ The Trinity makes pluralism possible! On this analytical point Schwöbel veers away from a Barthian path by concentrating less on speculative axiomatic questions of the immanent Trinity and more on the pluralist ways in which the Trinity acts in the world. Christian theology's answer to the question of pluralism is The unity of world history is mediated by diverse divine actions promoting abundant life.

This book has given me the occasion, not only to summarize its content, but to take a closer look at the way in which theological writing can be adequate to its distinctive subject matter. If the contemporary context is indeed ecumenically, culturally, and ideologically pluralist, then the form of Christian theology—its genre, language, and central concepts—must be such to facilitate transdiscursive communication and understanding. If a theologian is to articulate a distinctive schematization of reality and to promote the truth of this understanding, then his claims must be fashioned in such a way that they can be heard by those outside the race, class, and gender contingent to his own cultural location. The power of Christian theology for the twenty-first century stands or falls with the cultivation of a form that both adequately represents its object of study and cultivates a readership with which true dialogue can take place. My subsequent comments use Schwöbel's book as a point of departure for thinking about new responsibilities regarding the form of theological writing that are given in this new situation of pluralism.

The theologian's métier is the crafting of the concept. Philosophical concepts, such as truth and reality, and theological concepts, such as love and evil, are generated and developed in history as the basis for transhistorical dialogue. Consensus regarding common concepts is a dialogical sine qua non; without something in common to talk about, theological discussion would regress into isolated soliloquies. A theologian who desires to communicate her particular assigning of historical and constructive predicates to concepts must pay special care to the form and language in which this crafting is expressed.

Schwöbel's in-depth work on theological concepts is evident in his references to articles he has written for one of the two definitive Protestant lexica, Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart.⁶

Yet the deployment of concepts for rhetorical emphasis differs from the use of concepts in establishing a common subject matter for dialogical investigation. Concepts facilitate dialogue when an agreement concerning their content is reached, and concepts promote the dialectic of truth-seeking when differences can be brought into dialogical play. In a pluralist context, it can be neither assumed that one's readers have access to a common history of concept formation. Nor can it be taken for granted that readers are familiar with the rationale for why specific concepts are evoked in view of a particular subject matter. The reason for the Christian theological fascination with metaphysical and world-historical unity, for example, might be less than transparent to those thinkers who rejoice in difference. Nor can concepts that appear in pedantically predictable syntax provide the legitimate pleasures of reading. The challenge facing the tendency to theological abstraction is precisely the challenge to theology to ground its claims in an empirically accessible account of reality. Questions such as “why” and “how” are hermeneutical primers for this very purpose. Explanations concerning the mechanics of concept formation are integral parts of communicating theological content, while explorations into polyvalent meanings of those concepts are necessary in promoting sincere dialogue with those outside a limited arena of conversation.

Christian faith, as Robert A. Orsi argues in his most recent groundbreaking work, Between Heaven and Earth,⁷

is not a matter of doctrinally relevant concepts. Faith is rather a lived reality. The question posed to theology by current historical and ethnographic methods in religious studies is empirical adequacy. The difference between the concept as cliché and the concept alive with its predicates lies precisely in its empirical determination. Abstraction is an inevitability of conceptual thought; the more abstract the concept, the more empty it is of its predicates. Yet theology cannot be allowed to degenerate into abstracted meaninglessness. If this discipline is truly called to represent an understanding of reality, as I believe it is, then it must be tied to real moorings, whether anthropological, historical, psychological, or cultural. Relations to the biblical text, for example, have functioned traditionally as a way of concretizing theological claims. The call to empirical integrity does not imply an abdication of conceptual thinking. Rather, the clarity with which the concepts are empirically determined and communicated will have a bearing on the cultivation of dialogical give-and-take. Theology is neither mission, nor the conveying of information, nor indoctrination,⁸ but it is the mutual search for the truth of a reality that is lived out in infinite determination.

Especially a subject matter as rich, complicated, and metaphysically as imaginative as the Trinity requires more than the simple recitation of trinitarian mantras Schwöbel offers. In a context that either venerates the trinitarian doctrine rather than the living God or a context that scoffs at doctrinal norms, it is the responsibility of Christian theologians committed to the Trinity to give body to this dogma in terms of “lived religion.”⁹

Of all Christian theological doctrines, it is perhaps the Trinity that has been most isolated in its theological exposition from the everyday experience of practicing (Western) Christians. Relegated to metaphysical and epistemological prolegomena, idolized as a formula of orthodoxy, and promoted to a speculative all-encompassing world-historical explanatory principle, the trinitarian worldview is not always as self-evident in discussions of pluralism as Schwöbel assumes. In fact, the task of Christian theology in the wider circumstance of contemporary pluralism is precisely the study of trinitarian faith in devotional gestures, in liturgical practices, and in the daily lives of Christians determining the meaning of their faith in dynamic relation to the three persons of the one God. The Christian faith can be seen in the light of heavenly ordained individuality when the Trinity is brought down to earth in embodied relationships.

Empirical determination of the concept requires a listening to the vibrations, tones, and moods of the experience of faith. A theology responsible to the emerging differentiation of religious experience must open its eyes to those experiences located in regions outside a male-dominated, primarily German and North American context. Yes, German Protestantism is the cradle of Protestant concept formation with world-historical consequences. Nevertheless, the cultivation of theological readership lies precisely with the inclusion of dialogue partners beyond one's linguistic purview. It is here where Schwöbel gravely fails the test of pluralism. A brief look at his index of names reveals his almost exclusive indebtedness to the European male tradition, with a few transatlantic forays. The omission of both theologians emerging from non-European traditions and of female scholars is glaring. Even the three references to “my wife” (meine Frau) in the preface¹⁰

are only once met with a concretization of her name, Marlene.¹¹ Enough is enough!

Theological writing on pluralism demands an ethical opening of the field of dialogue partners. Whatever the specific reason—whether mutual enrichment of positions, demonstration of ethical respect, a gesture to epistemological modesty, or the goal of persuasion—a theology responsible to the contemporary context cannot continue to select its conversants from within a tradition privileged by history's continency. Rather than assuming readership, invitation should be the privileged ethic.

Schwöbel's book may be thought of as a resource for learning the concepts necessary for passing theological German. At the most, it launches a challenge to contemporary theologians to pay earnest attention to the adequacy of form and language to content. Christian faith is alive in many contexts, and its concepts shimmer with many facets of meaning. When regarded from this perspective, Christianity has something to live, so that theology has something to talk about.