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Remembered Voices. Reclaiming the Legacy of "Neo-Orthodoxy." By Douglas John Hall. Louisville: Westminster John Knox, 1998, x + 166 pp., $19.95 paper.
According to Douglas Hall, the greatest theologians of the twentieth century are the representatives of "neo-orthodoxy." Even though the term itself needs explanation, it cannot be ignored as a movement that was on the cutting edge of Christian theology in the first half of our century. Why then should we be reminded of it now? Hall claims that Karl Barth, Paul Tillich, Reinhold Niebuhr, Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Emil Brunner, H. Richard Niebuhr and Suzanne de Dietrich represent a movement that is "one of the richest most encyclopedic outpourings of Christian theological work in the entire history of this faith" (p. 5). Hall's goal is to remember their voices by choosing one major point of concentration from each theologian in order to help us understand their emphases that need to be heard in our present world.
To attempt to summarize seven theologians in one book seems to be an impossible task. Hall succeeds, however, in giving us his opinion on the main idea from each representative of neo-orthodoxy. His choices are colored by what he considers to be the most important ideas for our theological orientation, which he explains...