Reviews for Women & The Historical Jesus

The average rating for Women & The Historical Jesus based on 2 reviews is 4 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2014-08-11 00:00:00 Chad B. I very much do not know how to take this book. I have read multiple reviews that suggest this is one of the easier reads in the RO series, and that Cunningham elucidates the thought of the philosophers whom he analyzes. I am not sure where I mis-stepped and got off the interpretive path, but I found Cunningham's book immensely difficult, much more so than the other RO books I have read. Further, I felt that he obscured rather than clarified the thought of some of the philosophers. Also I felt the task of revealing inherent nihilism in Modern philosophy was a bit off target. A more accurate (and more interesting) stated goal would have been to sure the inherent paganism in "secular" thought and how various philosophers reconfigured pagan philosophy. It may even then be argued that paganism is related, similar, connected, or synonymous with nihilism. But I felt that Cunningham may have had to skew philosophers thought in order to show them as inherently nihilistic when they emerged to be more pagan. That being said, I did find Cunningham's book very interesting. His treatment of the selected philosophers, while occasionally skewed as mentioned above, was still very well researched (several chapters had 200+ end notes) and fairly innovative. The second part of the book offers a comprehensive view of nihilism with an alternative philosophy (theology) grounded in Trinitarian thought. While nihilism makes all difference equal, and thus not so different (indifferent, even), Trinitarian theology respects difference. And while nihilism treats and utilize nothing as something, theology asserts that creation is something out of nothing. Thus difference is respected, and discourse can continue in theology. Interesting, but I think I will need a second read to adequately review it. I clearly missed something. But what I got, I thought was very useful for theology.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-06-16 00:00:00 Andrew Mccormack Although I have sympathy with the Radical Orthodoxy movement and despite the fact that this book contains good insights, It definitely can drive you crazy by repeating "Nothing as something" several times without enough explanation about the meaning of the term. Furthermore, he believed that one needs to mention the reference of every single sentence in a way that at the end of the day it looks like a collage of a philosophers quotations, not an academic text.