Susan A. Ross's Anthropology: Seeking Light and Beauty offers an engaging contemporary theological anthropology richly informed by the Christian theological tradition. Modeling her approach on David Tracy's method of critical correlation, Ross places the complexity of the Christian tradition in dialogue with significant theological, philosophical, and scientific issues that mark the contemporary context.
The book is divided into two sections: the first three chapters cover historical theological anthropologies and the last four examine contemporary issues in light of Christian understandings of the human. Ross opens her volume by highlighting the role of desire and our quest for fulfillment as fundamental to her theological work. This desire to fill the emptiness in our lives is fundamental to our humanity. The three historical chapters provide a broad historical sweep of the most influential themes and theologians that have shaped Christian reflections on what it means to be human. Ross is careful to situate these thinkers in the world from which they emerged and to examine how this social location influenced their thought. Through her summary of theological anthropologies Ross introduces the reader to the major theologians of the Christian traditions.
The four constructive chapters turn to the contemporary issues that Ross understands as central to approaching theological anthropologies today. Chapter 4 provides an overview of postmodern selfhood and the fragmented otherness that characterizes the postmodern condition. The chapter concludes with a survey of Christian thinkers who are engaging postmodern thought today. The body and sexuality are the focus of chapter 5. Here Ross provides a broad panorama of the theological and social movements that have shaped contemporary understandings of the body. I appreciate the manner in which Ross includes the Roman Catholic tradition and more critical constructive voices in her discussion. Chapter 6 focuses on the challenge of evil to contemporary Christian anthropologies. The final chapter turns to the scientific world, emphasizing ways theology can learn from science to inform a vision of the human interconnected with the cosmos.
While this book is part of Liturgical Press's Engaging Theology series, which is geared toward graduate students, the accessibility of Ross's writing makes the book appropriate for an upper-division undergraduate audience as well. Ross skillfully provides the reader with a broad outline of the central themes and figures in the historical Christian tradition, setting the stage for the constructive work she includes later in the book. This much-needed introduction to the tradition is often missing from contemporary constructive theologies. This book would work well in general introductory courses to theology, as well as in more specialized courses that examine feminist theology, constructive theology, and theological anthropology.
