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dkatreads's review against another edition
5.0
Wow. Cone is brilliant and a beautiful storyteller. He was humble, yet unbending. Honest in a refreshing self-interrogative way, yet confidently impassioned to reflect the ray of light given to him and him only, at the time. He really changed the course of the church forever. And unequivocally for the better.
So many things to pull out. But his passion. His inspiration. His love for Jesus even as he wrestled like Malcolm earned him my utmost respect. One of the most honest theologians I know.
So many things to pull out. But his passion. His inspiration. His love for Jesus even as he wrestled like Malcolm earned him my utmost respect. One of the most honest theologians I know.
adamrshields's review against another edition
5.0
Second reading:
Summary: To understand Cone's theology, you need to understand Cone and his context.
James H Cone has been a frequent concern in many conservative white Christian circles over the past year. There are several causes for that, but one of the threads that has given rise to the discussion is that Walter Strickland, one of only a handful of Black professors at a Southern Baptist seminary, was quoted by Molly Worthen in an NYT article saying that he assigned James H Cone and found value in interacting with him. That gave rise to calls for Strickland to resign, which prompted this statement.
The controversy continued with the president of the seminary where Strickland works both defending Strickland and calling Cone a heretic and 'almost certainly not a Christian' on twitter. Andre Henry wrote an article about the controversy. It was this background that a friend of a friend asked to discuss Cone. Over this past weekend, I picked up the audiobook and listened to it (having previously read it when it first came out.)
I am not a Cone scholar. I have not read all of his books, although I will probably read all of them eventually (there are not that many). In my lay opinion, I think that people tend to approach Cone wrong. Many people want to jump into early constructive theology, God of the Oppressed or A Black Theology of Liberation. I think that because of his theological method, heavily drawing on his personal and cultural experience, that you need to start with one or both of his memoirs.
Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody was posthumously published. The book was completed and ready for publication when Cone passed away in 2018. His earlier My Soul Looks Back was a mid-career memoir. There is a lot over overlapping material, but they are both worth reading. If you are looking for an order, I would recommend, Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Spirituals and the Blues, My Soul Looks Back, Martin & Malcolm & American and then you can move his earlier constructive theology.
I say all of this because Cone developed his theology in response to the culture of the US during the late civil rights era.
Cone trained as a theologian at Garrett–Evangelical Theological Seminary. His dissertation was on Barth. He studied all of the European theologians of note. He eventually determined that:
Cone had a response to this theology that was very similar to the response to Black Lives Matters over the past couple of years:
Cone viewed his work not as opposing people that have white skin, either as individuals or as a group, but opposing a system of belief that valued white skin more than black skin. In other words, Cone was not asserting the superiority of black skin over white skin in response to the historical assertion of the superiority of white skin, but both metaphorically and actually asserting that the black historical culture was more authentically Christian because it was closer to the oppressed, which is where Jesus was.
One of the disconnects between Cone and traditional white theology is the role of rationality in theology. Cone is speaking metaphorically frequently. He is often read as if he is always speaking literally. His own dissertation advisor accused Cone of "All you have done is try to justify black people killing me and other whites." An accusation which Cone says was absurd, he was trying to assert both the image of God in black bodies and the sin of oppressing them. But the disconnect is more than just that. Cone asserts that theology is ultimately non-rational.
Cone's understanding of theology as non-rational, I think, is why his writing is littered with musical (and poetic) references. The music of both the spirituals and the blues is attempting to use the imagination to understand God in a transrational way. (Willie James Jennings uses a similar type of language in his The Christain Imagination. )
And
And
I read Cone, not because I think he is the culmination of all Black theology or even particularly representative of the Black church as a whole, but because he is writing theology that is attempting to contextualize his experience of growing up in the Jim Crow south, coming of age in the civil rights era and continuing to speak to the reality of the world in what many white people think is a 'post-racial' society. The reality is that Cone is far more accurately describing theological reality than many that continue to insist that racism is not real, or those that recently were trying to say that slavery was not all that theologically bad.
_________
First reading
Short Review: I read Cone's 1985 memoir My Soul Looks Back almost exactly a year ago. Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody obviously still is a memoir and covers some similar material, but it surprisingly different. More than 40 years between the two memoirs does matter.
I could easily have a quote review, but I resisted. I did probably quote too much in my blog post about it, but Cone is quotable.
I think this is important as context to the rest of Cone's writing. It is not that Cone doesn't give context for why in his other books, but this extended reflection really is helpful for the broader context of Cone's whole career. I think this is probably even more important for people that want to reject his theology out of hand. There is much to grapple with here.
My longer review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/cone-memoir/
Summary: To understand Cone's theology, you need to understand Cone and his context.
James H Cone has been a frequent concern in many conservative white Christian circles over the past year. There are several causes for that, but one of the threads that has given rise to the discussion is that Walter Strickland, one of only a handful of Black professors at a Southern Baptist seminary, was quoted by Molly Worthen in an NYT article saying that he assigned James H Cone and found value in interacting with him. That gave rise to calls for Strickland to resign, which prompted this statement.
The controversy continued with the president of the seminary where Strickland works both defending Strickland and calling Cone a heretic and 'almost certainly not a Christian' on twitter. Andre Henry wrote an article about the controversy. It was this background that a friend of a friend asked to discuss Cone. Over this past weekend, I picked up the audiobook and listened to it (having previously read it when it first came out.)
I am not a Cone scholar. I have not read all of his books, although I will probably read all of them eventually (there are not that many). In my lay opinion, I think that people tend to approach Cone wrong. Many people want to jump into early constructive theology, God of the Oppressed or A Black Theology of Liberation. I think that because of his theological method, heavily drawing on his personal and cultural experience, that you need to start with one or both of his memoirs.
Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody was posthumously published. The book was completed and ready for publication when Cone passed away in 2018. His earlier My Soul Looks Back was a mid-career memoir. There is a lot over overlapping material, but they are both worth reading. If you are looking for an order, I would recommend, Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody, The Cross and the Lynching Tree, Spirituals and the Blues, My Soul Looks Back, Martin & Malcolm & American and then you can move his earlier constructive theology.
I say all of this because Cone developed his theology in response to the culture of the US during the late civil rights era.
When the Detroit rebellion, also known as the “12th Street Riot,” broke out in July of 1967, the turmoil woke me out of my academic world. I could no longer continue quietly teaching white students at Adrian College (Michigan) about Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, and other European theologians when black people were dying in the streets of Detroit, Newark, and the back roads of Mississippi and Alabama. I had to do something. But I wasn't a civil rights leader, like Martin Luther King Jr., or an artist, like James Baldwin, who was spurred in his writing when he saw the searing image of a black girl, Dorothy Counts, surrounded by hateful whites as she attempted to integrate a white high school in Charlotte, North Carolina (September 1957). I was a theologian, asking: What, if anything, is theology worth in the black struggle in America?
Cone trained as a theologian at Garrett–Evangelical Theological Seminary. His dissertation was on Barth. He studied all of the European theologians of note. He eventually determined that:
white supremacy is America's original sin and liberation is the Bible's central message. Any theology in America that fails to engage white supremacy and God's liberation of black people from that evil is not Christian theology but a theology of the Antichrist.
Cone had a response to this theology that was very similar to the response to Black Lives Matters over the past couple of years:
When I spoke of loving blackness and embracing Black Power, they heard hate toward white people. Malcolm X, Stokely Carmichael, and James Baldwin confronted similar reactions. Any talk about the love and beauty of blackness seemed to arouse fear and hostility in whites.
Cone viewed his work not as opposing people that have white skin, either as individuals or as a group, but opposing a system of belief that valued white skin more than black skin. In other words, Cone was not asserting the superiority of black skin over white skin in response to the historical assertion of the superiority of white skin, but both metaphorically and actually asserting that the black historical culture was more authentically Christian because it was closer to the oppressed, which is where Jesus was.
“How can I, a white [person] become black?” was the most frequent question whites asked me. “Being black in America has very little to do with skin color,” I wrote. “To be black means that your heart, your soul, your mind, and your body are where the dispossessed are.”6 To become black is like what Jesus told Nicodemus, that he must be “born again,” that is, “born of water and Spirit” (John 3), the Black Spirit of liberation. Black religion scholars would push back hard on this theological claim. Among my fiercest critics, and at the same time a devoted friend, was Gayraud Wilmore, author of the important text Black Religion and Black Radicalism (1973). But I held firm to my claim, despite his objections, because I was speaking primarily symbolically, while Wilmore was speaking primarily historically. History significantly informs what theologians say, but it's not the final arbiter in theological matters. The Word of God, Jesus the Christ, as revealed in scripture and black experience, is the final judge. I didn't see how anyone could be a Christian and not understand that.
One of the disconnects between Cone and traditional white theology is the role of rationality in theology. Cone is speaking metaphorically frequently. He is often read as if he is always speaking literally. His own dissertation advisor accused Cone of "All you have done is try to justify black people killing me and other whites." An accusation which Cone says was absurd, he was trying to assert both the image of God in black bodies and the sin of oppressing them. But the disconnect is more than just that. Cone asserts that theology is ultimately non-rational.
Theology is not philosophy; it is not primarily rational language and thus cannot answer the question of theodicy, which philosophers have wrestled with for centuries. Theology is symbolic language, language about the imagination, which seeks to comprehend what is beyond comprehension. Theology is not antirational but it is nonrational, transcending the world of rational discourse and pointing to a realm of reality that can only be grasped by means of the imagination. That was why Reinhold Niebuhr said, “One should not talk about ultimate reality without imagination,” and why the poet Wallace Stevens said, “God and the imagination are one.” Black liberation theology strives to open a world in which black people's dignity is recognized.
Cone's understanding of theology as non-rational, I think, is why his writing is littered with musical (and poetic) references. The music of both the spirituals and the blues is attempting to use the imagination to understand God in a transrational way. (Willie James Jennings uses a similar type of language in his The Christain Imagination. )
I wasn't writing for rational reasons based on library research; I was writing out of my experience, speaking for the dignity of black people in a white supremacist world. I was on a mission to transform self-loathing Negro Christians into black-loving revolutionary disciples of the Black Christ.
And
The cross is a paradoxical religious symbol because it inverts the world's value system, proclaiming that hope comes by way of defeat, that suffering and death do not have the last word, that the last shall be first and the first last. Secular intellectuals find this idea absurd, but it is profoundly real in the spiritual life of black folk.
And
Nobody knows the trouble I've seen, Nobody knows my sorrow, Nobody knows the trouble I've seen, Glory Hallelujah! As I heard it, the “trouble” is white folks, and the “Hallelujah” is a faith expression that white folks don't have the last word about life's ultimate meaning.
I read Cone, not because I think he is the culmination of all Black theology or even particularly representative of the Black church as a whole, but because he is writing theology that is attempting to contextualize his experience of growing up in the Jim Crow south, coming of age in the civil rights era and continuing to speak to the reality of the world in what many white people think is a 'post-racial' society. The reality is that Cone is far more accurately describing theological reality than many that continue to insist that racism is not real, or those that recently were trying to say that slavery was not all that theologically bad.
_________
First reading
Short Review: I read Cone's 1985 memoir My Soul Looks Back almost exactly a year ago. Said I Wasn't Gonna Tell Nobody obviously still is a memoir and covers some similar material, but it surprisingly different. More than 40 years between the two memoirs does matter.
I could easily have a quote review, but I resisted. I did probably quote too much in my blog post about it, but Cone is quotable.
I think this is important as context to the rest of Cone's writing. It is not that Cone doesn't give context for why in his other books, but this extended reflection really is helpful for the broader context of Cone's whole career. I think this is probably even more important for people that want to reject his theology out of hand. There is much to grapple with here.
My longer review is on my blog at http://bookwi.se/cone-memoir/
jarreloliveira's review against another edition
5.0
When theologians spend their academic lives discussing the benevolent grandiosity of God, his words, his qualities, his sovereign will, and nature, but the same thinkers fail to confront the realities of their times, namely, the plight of African Americans, we can safely assume these erudite thinkers are simply using theology to avoid the unfortunate circumstances of their anthropology.
I commend the late, great, Professor James H. Cone for being courageous enough to write The Cross and The Lynching Tree, for continuing his academic work, for being a scholar and paving the way for many others to follow in suit, further building upon black liberation theology and condemn white evangelical racism and racist theology for what it was - sin.
His understanding of Malcolm X's anger and appreciation for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s's led him to a developmental stalemate. He was unsure of how to better his theology without capitulating to one extreme or being accused of cowardice if he took the other. Professor Cone was enamored by King's distinguished drive in the path of non-violence and immediate change. He looked up to King's effort to hail the cross of Christ as the pinnacle of black endurance through suffering, pain, and terror. He read through King's speeches where the Civil Rights maverick condemned white supremacy, systemic racism, and white moderates who talked much and did little, and sustained the status quo and hegemony. Professor Cone was enraged when King was assassinated and his bend toward non-violence all but faded, temptation luring him toward X's rhetoric and the Nation of Islam's separatist invective.
Unsure of which path to take, he found refuge and solace in the works and life of the enigmatic and wordsmith author and speaker, James Baldwin.
Baldwin not only appreciated King's non-violence, but he also welcomed X's rage. Baldwin put to words and brought to life that which burned most in the black intellect and the black lived experience in America. He called whites evildoers and evil, he called for a distancing from Christianity because it no longer persisted of Christians but of men and women who lynched black bodies behind church buildings.
James H. Cone found in the author James Baldwin a quintessential hero. The perfect mix between the anger-filled X and the non-violence-focused King.
Professor Cone's theological, social, and moral formation involved the works of Christian thinkers but also non-Christian spiritual giants, namely, Howard Thurman who penned the inimitable book, Jesus and the Disinherited.
It was a relief to take in this professor's formation, knowing and understanding that theologians have to grapple not only with the beauty of who God is and what God has accomplished, but also, who God is doing all those things for.
I am now very suspicious of ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ who speak plainly and loudly about Jesus but are mute concerning Jesus's followers - those who suffer at the hands of other Christians.
Much appreciated book and I hope others make time for its content and the Holy Spirit that lived then is still working in us today, pushing us to further liberate our theology from ethnocentric patterns and arrogance.
I pray it's not too late.
I commend the late, great, Professor James H. Cone for being courageous enough to write The Cross and The Lynching Tree, for continuing his academic work, for being a scholar and paving the way for many others to follow in suit, further building upon black liberation theology and condemn white evangelical racism and racist theology for what it was - sin.
His understanding of Malcolm X's anger and appreciation for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s's led him to a developmental stalemate. He was unsure of how to better his theology without capitulating to one extreme or being accused of cowardice if he took the other. Professor Cone was enamored by King's distinguished drive in the path of non-violence and immediate change. He looked up to King's effort to hail the cross of Christ as the pinnacle of black endurance through suffering, pain, and terror. He read through King's speeches where the Civil Rights maverick condemned white supremacy, systemic racism, and white moderates who talked much and did little, and sustained the status quo and hegemony. Professor Cone was enraged when King was assassinated and his bend toward non-violence all but faded, temptation luring him toward X's rhetoric and the Nation of Islam's separatist invective.
Unsure of which path to take, he found refuge and solace in the works and life of the enigmatic and wordsmith author and speaker, James Baldwin.
Baldwin not only appreciated King's non-violence, but he also welcomed X's rage. Baldwin put to words and brought to life that which burned most in the black intellect and the black lived experience in America. He called whites evildoers and evil, he called for a distancing from Christianity because it no longer persisted of Christians but of men and women who lynched black bodies behind church buildings.
James H. Cone found in the author James Baldwin a quintessential hero. The perfect mix between the anger-filled X and the non-violence-focused King.
Professor Cone's theological, social, and moral formation involved the works of Christian thinkers but also non-Christian spiritual giants, namely, Howard Thurman who penned the inimitable book, Jesus and the Disinherited.
It was a relief to take in this professor's formation, knowing and understanding that theologians have to grapple not only with the beauty of who God is and what God has accomplished, but also, who God is doing all those things for.
I am now very suspicious of ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ who speak plainly and loudly about Jesus but are mute concerning Jesus's followers - those who suffer at the hands of other Christians.
Much appreciated book and I hope others make time for its content and the Holy Spirit that lived then is still working in us today, pushing us to further liberate our theology from ethnocentric patterns and arrogance.
I pray it's not too late.
jarreloliveira's review
5.0
When theologians spend their academic lives discussing the benevolent grandiosity of God, his words, his qualities, his sovereign will, and nature, but the same thinkers fail to confront the realities of their times, namely, the plight of African Americans, we can safely assume these erudite thinkers are simply using theology to avoid the unfortunate circumstances of their anthropology.
I commend the late, great, Professor James H. Cone for being courageous enough to write The Cross and The Lynching Tree, for continuing his academic work, for being a scholar and paving the way for many others to follow in suit, further building upon black liberation theology and condemn white evangelical racism and racist theology for what it was - sin.
His understanding of Malcolm X's anger and appreciation for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s's led him to a developmental stalemate. He was unsure of how to better his theology without capitulating to one extreme or being accused of cowardice if he took the other. Professor Cone was enamored by King's distinguished drive in the path of non-violence and immediate change. He looked up to King's effort to hail the cross of Christ as the pinnacle of black endurance through suffering, pain, and terror. He read through King's speeches where the Civil Rights maverick condemned white supremacy, systemic racism, and white moderates who talked much and did little, and sustained the status quo and hegemony. Professor Cone was enraged when King was assassinated and his bend toward non-violence all but faded, temptation luring him toward X's rhetoric and the Nation of Islam's separatist invective.
Unsure of which path to take, he found refuge and solace in the works and life of the enigmatic and wordsmith author and speaker, James Baldwin.
Baldwin not only appreciated King's non-violence, but he also welcomed X's rage. Baldwin put to words and brought to life that which burned most in the black intellect and the black lived experience in America. He called whites evildoers and evil, he called for a distancing from Christianity because it no longer persisted of Christians but of men and women who lynched black bodies behind church buildings.
James H. Cone found in the author James Baldwin a quintessential hero. The perfect mix between the anger-filled X and the non-violence-focused King.
Professor Cone's theological, social, and moral formation involved the works of Christian thinkers but also non-Christian spiritual giants, namely, Howard Thurman who penned the inimitable book, Jesus and the Disinherited.
It was a relief to take in this professor's formation, knowing and understanding that theologians have to grapple not only with the beauty of who God is and what God has accomplished, but also, who God is doing all those things for.
I am now very suspicious of ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ who speak plainly and loudly about Jesus but are mute concerning Jesus's followers - those who suffer at the hands of other Christians.
Much appreciated book and I hope others make time for its content and the Holy Spirit that lived then is still working in us today, pushing us to further liberate our theology from ethnocentric patterns and arrogance.
I pray it's not too late.
I commend the late, great, Professor James H. Cone for being courageous enough to write The Cross and The Lynching Tree, for continuing his academic work, for being a scholar and paving the way for many others to follow in suit, further building upon black liberation theology and condemn white evangelical racism and racist theology for what it was - sin.
His understanding of Malcolm X's anger and appreciation for Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.s's led him to a developmental stalemate. He was unsure of how to better his theology without capitulating to one extreme or being accused of cowardice if he took the other. Professor Cone was enamored by King's distinguished drive in the path of non-violence and immediate change. He looked up to King's effort to hail the cross of Christ as the pinnacle of black endurance through suffering, pain, and terror. He read through King's speeches where the Civil Rights maverick condemned white supremacy, systemic racism, and white moderates who talked much and did little, and sustained the status quo and hegemony. Professor Cone was enraged when King was assassinated and his bend toward non-violence all but faded, temptation luring him toward X's rhetoric and the Nation of Islam's separatist invective.
Unsure of which path to take, he found refuge and solace in the works and life of the enigmatic and wordsmith author and speaker, James Baldwin.
Baldwin not only appreciated King's non-violence, but he also welcomed X's rage. Baldwin put to words and brought to life that which burned most in the black intellect and the black lived experience in America. He called whites evildoers and evil, he called for a distancing from Christianity because it no longer persisted of Christians but of men and women who lynched black bodies behind church buildings.
James H. Cone found in the author James Baldwin a quintessential hero. The perfect mix between the anger-filled X and the non-violence-focused King.
Professor Cone's theological, social, and moral formation involved the works of Christian thinkers but also non-Christian spiritual giants, namely, Howard Thurman who penned the inimitable book, Jesus and the Disinherited.
It was a relief to take in this professor's formation, knowing and understanding that theologians have to grapple not only with the beauty of who God is and what God has accomplished, but also, who God is doing all those things for.
I am now very suspicious of ministers of the gospel of Jesus Christ who speak plainly and loudly about Jesus but are mute concerning Jesus's followers - those who suffer at the hands of other Christians.
Much appreciated book and I hope others make time for its content and the Holy Spirit that lived then is still working in us today, pushing us to further liberate our theology from ethnocentric patterns and arrogance.
I pray it's not too late.
tdwightdavis's review
5.0
How do I even talk about this book? James Cone is probably the single most important theologian in my life. I often refer to reading him for the first time as my second conversion experience. His thought infected me and I’ve spent the better part of a decade trying to get the words he put inside of me out into the world. He reinvigorated Christianity for me. He showed how white supremacy had so infiltrated my religion and indicted me for participating in that. He challenged me. He pissed me off. He rebuked me. And I fought back and disagreed and yelled and eventually shut up and sat at his feet.
I remember the moment it happened. I was writing a chapter about Cone for my first master’s thesis. On one half of my computer screen was the Word document, on the other half was a live stream from the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. On one half of the screen was a paper where I was saying that Cone was too angry and militant (the most common critique whites level at him) and on the other half were peaceful protestors shouting “hands up don’t shoot” as police snipers placed laser sites on their chests. I was livid. I felt an anger inside of me that I didn’t know what to do with. And suddenly I got it. Suddenly I disagreed with all of my critiques against Cone. The chapter was due the next day. I had to email my supervisor and tell him why I couldn’t submit it. I had to scrap the chapter altogether and it took another 4 years before I felt like I could write about Cone.
So I have an emotional connection to Cone that I don’t have with any other thinker. And that connection is exacerbated by his recent death. To pretend that I am in any way capable of objectively assessing his posthumously released memoir is laughable.
This book is a miracle. It’s challenging and elucidating. Cone goes book by book, talking about what he was thinking and feeling as he wrote each of his treatises. He discusses what he learned from critics and students. He talks about his intellectual trinity of Martin King, Malcom X, and James Baldwin. He remains a prophet, boldly and unabashedly calling out white supremacy and complacency. And he offers more grace and forgiveness than I’ve ever seen in his writing. This book is a must read for anyone reading Cone. It illuminates and grants clarity to his entire corpus. And it’s a damn good read too.
I loved this book. I want everyone to read this book. I want to teach this book. I can’t say enough good things about this book.
I remember the moment it happened. I was writing a chapter about Cone for my first master’s thesis. On one half of my computer screen was the Word document, on the other half was a live stream from the streets of Ferguson, Missouri. On one half of the screen was a paper where I was saying that Cone was too angry and militant (the most common critique whites level at him) and on the other half were peaceful protestors shouting “hands up don’t shoot” as police snipers placed laser sites on their chests. I was livid. I felt an anger inside of me that I didn’t know what to do with. And suddenly I got it. Suddenly I disagreed with all of my critiques against Cone. The chapter was due the next day. I had to email my supervisor and tell him why I couldn’t submit it. I had to scrap the chapter altogether and it took another 4 years before I felt like I could write about Cone.
So I have an emotional connection to Cone that I don’t have with any other thinker. And that connection is exacerbated by his recent death. To pretend that I am in any way capable of objectively assessing his posthumously released memoir is laughable.
This book is a miracle. It’s challenging and elucidating. Cone goes book by book, talking about what he was thinking and feeling as he wrote each of his treatises. He discusses what he learned from critics and students. He talks about his intellectual trinity of Martin King, Malcom X, and James Baldwin. He remains a prophet, boldly and unabashedly calling out white supremacy and complacency. And he offers more grace and forgiveness than I’ve ever seen in his writing. This book is a must read for anyone reading Cone. It illuminates and grants clarity to his entire corpus. And it’s a damn good read too.
I loved this book. I want everyone to read this book. I want to teach this book. I can’t say enough good things about this book.
kateb1's review against another edition
challenging
emotional
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.5
Dr. Cone’s memoir is an inspiring account of his development of Liberation Theology, and the struggles that he overcame to become one of the foremost theologians in the 20th century. It is a great starting point for those who aren’t ready to jump straight into a major theological text like God of the Oppressed, and a useful supplement for those who already study theology and/or ethics.
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