Face of the Deep: A Theology of Becoming

Rating:
Summary: A brilliant example of constructive theology
Review: Catherine Keller is one of the most powerful theologians to write in our time. Her thorough, creative, brilliant and intensely attentive reexamination of the most common and traditional assumptions and dogmatic formations regarding creation is one of the most important contributions to contemporary theology.
She has read widely and deeply to bring into deep and effective conversation with theology recent developments in chaos and complexity science, literary theory, race and gender studies as well as issues concerning ecology and economy. For anybody who is interested in how science and religion might communicate today around issues of the universe as creation, this is one of the important books to consider. Keller effectively makes the case that what most of 'orthodox' theology has assumed as 'fact', a 'creaton out of nothing,' is in fact a later development and not supported in the biblical text. Rather, the biblical text, as well as a fair number of theologians in early Christianity and Judaism knew of a different account, where God's spirit hovers over the watery, resonant, responsive Deep. Keller argues further that a theology that must affirm a 'creation out of nothing' where God is the only, unilateral agent, whether found in conservative or liberal/liberationist circles ends up reinscribing a unilaterally acting God, a macho bully, perhaps even, that in the end does not allow creation to respond and interact in a way that affirms God's profound, inviting love to all creation.
Keller argues that this erection of the masculine God is performed over the dismembered body of a female goddess, as well as the suppression of women and femininity in the deep, the sea that was inscribed as squishy, wet, squirmy, hiding abominable monsters. Futhermore, Keller describes how racism as in the case of 'light supremacism' of Christianity often has linked light and dark with skincolor, moral valor, and goodness. Keller encourages us to 'face the deep' in our own selves, so we can repent of forms of racism and sexism, internalized and externalized, and embrace, more deeply our own and others' multifaceted selves. This, she suggests, will allow us to more fully hear, respond and engage God's consistent lure, God's complex invitation to live and love our lives to the fullest, and to heal and be healed in the process.

Rating:
Summary: Captivating Chaos!
Review: No one writing in contemporary theology writes like Catherine Keller writes. Her often dense prose always rewards the careful reader with creative insights lodged in clever puns, subtle humor and deft literary, philosophical and psychological references.

Having tackled the "end of the world" in her previous book, Apocalypse Now and Then, Keller has in this volume shifted her acute attention to the story and mythology of beginnings as narrated in Genesis 1, and as richly, diversely interpreted in both the Jewish and Christian traditions.

I know of no one who can read (and write) a text with more wit, theological acumen and love of language than Catherine Keller. You must be willing to read carefully, slowly, allowing her dense imagery to soak into your head. But if you do, you will emerge from the swirling chaos a better, more profound human being.

Rating:
Summary: "Nothing comes from nothing..."
Review: The Face of the Deep is not a book to be grasped only with the head, so much as it is one to engage
with all one's faculties, of spirit, heart, and passion as well:

With the delicate precision
of a spider web,
Catherine Keller

cuts through the ancient
barriers between poet & theologian
academe, studio & mystic
ancient texts & post-modern physics

to build with & invite
into conversation
those who would,
in her words,
"be at home within uncertainty"