Book Reviews 515

The God Who Saves: A Dogmatic Sketch

David W. Congdon
Eugene, OR: Cascade Books, 2016. 316 pp. $39.00

The doctrine of salvation may be the most important doctrine in Christian theology.
Battles have literally been fought over it. Does God choose who will be saved and
who will be condemned? Does God allow the individual to choose salvation? Can one
lose one’s salvation, or is one “once saved, always saved?” Are there other options?
In addressing these questions Christians find themselves trudging in a theolog-
ical quagmire. Paul writes that God “desires everyone to be saved” (1 Tim. 2:4),
and Peter says that God does not want “any to perish, but all to come to
repentance” (2 Pet. 3:9). Does this mean that God ultimately will save everyone?
The thought fits better with John’s overriding chorus that “God is love” (1 John
4:8) than with a God who condemns to eternal punishment persons fashioned by
God’s own hands.
This is the argument that David Congdon, a Princeton-trained theologian who
is now an editor with the University of Kansas Press, put forth. In the cross of
Christ, God enacted a universally applicable eschatological event that put one
existence to death and births a new one. God, through Christ, saves all of human-
ity. The discussion found here is complex. Trivial clichés have no place in
Congdon’s discussion, and even the concept of universalism is more multifaceted
than simply saying, “God saves everyone.”
Congdon starts boldly: “This dogmatic sketch examines what it means to think
systematically according to the revelation that God is the one who saves—that is, the
one who saves all” (3). He then outlines a typology for understanding universalism:
multiethnic universalism (persons from all ethnic groups can be saved), potential
universalism (all could be saved, but not all will be saved), and actual universalism
(all will be saved). Building primarily on the works of Barth and Bultmann,
Congdon also looks at other great modern theologians such as Bonhoeffer,
Ebeling, Jüngel, Martyn, Moltmann, and Pannenberg. In bringing the writings of
these various authors together, Congdon weaves a coherent argument for God as
both the author and agent of salvation for all.
While his argument creates hope in readers who have wondered why a good and
loving God would allow anyone to be condemned, there remains an outstanding
issue with the universalism that Congdon promotes that is not adequately dealt
with in the book—ethics. Are we to assume that God’s agency will gloss over
genocide, sexual abuse, or tax evasion? This has been the issue most raised against
the acceptance of universalism, but is only dealt with in a small fashion here
(primarily in his section on natural law near the end of the book).
Overall, Congdon presents his case well and guides the reader to decide whether
to accept, reject, or revise his conclusions. Although the goal of Congdon’s argu-
ment is to convince the reader to accept actual universalism as the only logical
interpretation of soteriology, every reader may not be completely convinced.
516 Theology Today 75(4)

However, it is important to reassess one’s views on soteriology regularly, and

Congdon provides both the space and the vocabulary to do so.
Congdon writes with the gravity and gravitas of Barth, Bultmann, and others
whose work he engages. This is both a strength and limitation. Writing at this level
is Congdon’s strength in that he manages the various arguments related to salva-
tion while articulating a “dogmatic sketch” of salvation that is threaded through
the writings of these scholars of a generation ago. However, writing at this level is
also Congdon’s limitation in that the book is dense. Congdon writes for the
scholar, the one who is well versed in systematic theology and who is not only
familiar with the writings of Barth and company, but knows those works in their
original German. As a result, this book is not necessarily accessible even to all
academic readers.
In the final analysis, Congdon is quickly becoming one of our finer young
theologians. His previous work on Bultmann is a force to be reckoned with in
its own right. In this volume, we see Congdon offer a book that is both substantive
and substantial. While this is a dense work, it is a volume that engenders a vital
theological conversation. How are we to understand the redemptive work of Christ
on the cross? How does God offer salvation to humanity through this selfless act?
And how do we respond? These are questions of extreme theological significance,
questions that all adherents of faith must be able to answer. Thankfully Congdon
has been willing to once again open the conversation.

Rob O’Lynn
Kentucky Christian University

The Catholic Enlightenment: The Forgotten History of a Global Movement

Ulrich L. Lehner
New York: Oxford University Press, 2016. 257 pp. $29.95
Ulrich Lehner’s Catholic Enlightenment provides an adroit and readable survey of
the Catholic lights of the eighteenth century, though in fact the author identifies
the roots of this religious enlightenment with the Tridentine revival of humanistic
thinking (4) and so sets out a sophisticated and processual, rather than narrowly
periodic, vision of the topic. Moreover, Lehner defines “Catholic enlightenment”
rather generally as the reconciliation of Catholicism with modern culture (7)––and
thus the book can also be seen as a rousing plea for the recovery of a critical
tendency embedded but not fully developed in contemporary Catholic culture.
Lehner’s enlightened Catholics were, first and foremost, believers in the appli-
cation of criticism to theology and reformers convinced of the perfectibility of
structures, especially ecclesial ones. They were conciliarists and Erastians when
it came to the church and ecumenists when it came to other religions; yet they
were surprisingly puritanical when it came to their own religion, especially popular
Catholicism (7–10).