Mouchir Aoun, the Lebanese Greek Orthodox theologian and philosopher, produced the first draft of this volume in Arabic twenty years ago. It appeared in French version in 2016 under the title La Christ arabe, and now we have this French version published in English translation. The primary motivator of Aoun's book is his conviction of the constitutive status religion occupies in the Arab self-consciousness and worldview. When, however, we probe the place of religion within the intellectual awareness of the Arabs we discover, according to Aoun, ‘an epistemological impasse in which…Arab theological thinking is stuck…[it is] prisoner of the aporia that has a general hold on the contemporary Arab thinking’ (p. 100). He proposes in his book that the remedy for this crisis is theological in nature, specifically a ‘Lebanese politico-contextual theology’.
Aoun is perceptive in his diagnosis of the core challenges that generate an aporia in Arab Christian theological discourses. When it comes to unpacking the details of the aporia-related causes, Aoun counts four such causes: first, the obsolescence of the vocabularies Arab Christians use to convey Christ's kerygma to their Arabic-Muslim context; second, the challenge of the variety of influences and multiplicity of references that influence Arab Christian theology; third, the challenge of synchronisation between the ‘medieval, pre-conciliar’ elements of Arab Christian theology and the ‘modern and post-conciliar’ ones (pp. 104–5); and fourth, the split ‘between the content of the Gospel message and lived reality’ (p. 105).
How can we, then, conjure up an Arabic theological discourse that is free from the dilemmatic, aporetic ramifications of these four challenges? Aoun proposes a politico-contextual theological discourse circling around the theme of conviviality. The hermeneutical core of this theology must generate a consensual understanding ‘on major principles of common life, such as freedom, justice, peace [and] solidarity’ (p. 19). This is what enables the Arab Christians, in Aoun's opinion, to live and to foster conviviality with the Muslims in the Middle East.
Aoun could easily end his book at the closing of the 131 pages that comprise the first part of the volume, and tenably dispense with the ensuing, 206 page-long second part, which is an extensive, handbook-like, survey of models of theologies of conviviality already developed by other Lebanese theologians: Youakim Moubarac, Michel Hayek, George Khodr and Gregoire Haddad. Aoun's survey of these four Lebanese theologies of conviviality reveals that his proposed politico-contextual Lebanese theology hinges conspicuously on George Khodr's theological hermeneutics of conviviality. Aoun adapts without further ado Khodr's advocation of a theology of conviviality that is based on ‘three forms of justification: the absolute liberty of God, the multifarious radiance of the Spirit, and the multiple places in which Christ revealed Himself’ (pp. 259–60). Based on Khodr's proposal, Aoun concludes that the future of Arab theology of conviviality lies in finding its place in a religiously pluralist landscape, wherein only the language of love ‘will be able to express the distinctive yet universal characteristics of the Christ event in the context of contemporary Arab societies’ (p. 380).
Aoun's book is a valuable exposition of trends of theological reasoning in the Lebanese context and good introduction of these trends to the Anglophone readership. His main thesis, however, could have been easily presented in a shorter text and without the unnecessary repetition of other writers’ ideas and views. Aoun also over-ambitiously claims that developing theology to/in the Lebanese context would be representative and expressive of a theological discourse speaking on behalf of the entire Arab world. Such an allegation is far from congenial with Aoun's making of contextuality a key hermeneutical element in his theological reasoning: the Arab world is far more versatile and diverse contextually than being reductively and essentially ‘Lebanised’.
In this context, the title of the book misguides the reader. The main title, The Arab Christ, is not indicative of the main theme of the book's two parts. None of them offers an Arabic theological interpretation of Jesus Christ's event or life, identity and ministry, let alone reasoning theologically about Christology. On the other hand, the description of an ‘Arab Christian theology of conviviality’ in the book's subtitle in terms of ‘towardness’ gives the impression that the author is inviting the readers to ponder the possibility of developing a theological discourse that has not been moved towards before, and that the author is initiating, if not pioneering, this towardness. The second part of the book demonstrates that this is far from being the case. A more appropriate and telling title to the book would be something like: The Lebanese Christians: Politico-Contextual Models of a Theology of Conviviality. Notwithstanding these qualifications, this book offers a useful text to expose students, scholars and interested readers on what is going on theologically in that turbulent part of the world.
