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Christ the Stranger: The Theology of Rowan Williams
Rowan Williams is a complex, creative and versatile thinker. Not only a theologian and church leader, he is also a poet, translator, literary critic, social theorist and historian. His imaginative vision brings together the streams of modern literature, patristic theology, Russian orthodoxy, German philosophy and Welsh piety. In this lucid and elegant guide, Benjamin Myers explores Williams' thought from the 1960s to the present. He shows that Williams has developed a unique and distinctive response to some of the major social, moral and intellectual challenges of our time.
160 pages, Paperback
First published January 26, 2012
About the author
Ben Myers
8 books21 followersBen Myers is an author and researcher based in Brisbane, Australia.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
September 4, 2013
Theologians and readers and writers and other weirdos take notice: this book is wonderful. When I finished it, I stood up and applauded.
March 14, 2015
I choose to read this book for two reasons: one, I'm interested in the theology of Rowan Williams. Second, Benjamin Myers oversees the blog (faith-theology.com) which I frequently visit. I wanted to read a book by him. The three main arcs of the book are on Williams' thought on language/sociality/Wittgenstein, whole/parts/Hegel and lastly Freud/desire/delusion/hope/love.
I must admit, I read the book to quickly. I didn't steep myself in it, but enjoyed reading it quickly. It will be something I go back to to reference and help illuminate aspects of Williams' intractable thoughts. What I do remember, I'll share. Williams is unbelievably well read. He knows the Western and Eastern traditions of Christian thought, 9 or so languages, has poetic sensibilities yet is also philosophically astute. I find his work to be honest. Theology is tough work. It involves your whole self, but if our conclusions just verify our already-held-dear beliefs did we really encounter, embrace the God revealed in Jesus? I find the gospel accounts to be a haunting reminder to listen to "crazy" voices from time to times (including Paul in Acts (You're learning has driven you mad!)).
Here are some quotes I liked:
"According to the later Wittgenstein, philosophy is a therapeutic endeavor: "Work on philosophy... is really more work on oneself. On one's own conception. On how one sees things." In the same way, if Christ is a wound then theology is a sort of therapeutics of Christian identity, an attempt to unmask our fantasies and expose us to reality. Theology, as Williams also learned from Wittgenstein is not really about ides but about life. Through Christ's resurrection the reality of God has become woven into the fabric of human experience. God is what fractures our identity, and God is the new coherence of our stories. To perform this coherence to make God's reality legible in the embodied pattern of our lives, is what it means to speak of God. Simply put, "to live the forgiven life wholeheartedly is... to speak of God."" (35) "The church exists not for itself but for the sake of a reconciled humanity. Indeed the church is humanity made new, a new world in which the old walls of division have been torn down." (38). "Tradition keeps the church in contact with its own traumatic origins: the dark grace of an empty tomb" (49)
I must admit, I read the book to quickly. I didn't steep myself in it, but enjoyed reading it quickly. It will be something I go back to to reference and help illuminate aspects of Williams' intractable thoughts. What I do remember, I'll share. Williams is unbelievably well read. He knows the Western and Eastern traditions of Christian thought, 9 or so languages, has poetic sensibilities yet is also philosophically astute. I find his work to be honest. Theology is tough work. It involves your whole self, but if our conclusions just verify our already-held-dear beliefs did we really encounter, embrace the God revealed in Jesus? I find the gospel accounts to be a haunting reminder to listen to "crazy" voices from time to times (including Paul in Acts (You're learning has driven you mad!)).
Here are some quotes I liked:
"According to the later Wittgenstein, philosophy is a therapeutic endeavor: "Work on philosophy... is really more work on oneself. On one's own conception. On how one sees things." In the same way, if Christ is a wound then theology is a sort of therapeutics of Christian identity, an attempt to unmask our fantasies and expose us to reality. Theology, as Williams also learned from Wittgenstein is not really about ides but about life. Through Christ's resurrection the reality of God has become woven into the fabric of human experience. God is what fractures our identity, and God is the new coherence of our stories. To perform this coherence to make God's reality legible in the embodied pattern of our lives, is what it means to speak of God. Simply put, "to live the forgiven life wholeheartedly is... to speak of God."" (35) "The church exists not for itself but for the sake of a reconciled humanity. Indeed the church is humanity made new, a new world in which the old walls of division have been torn down." (38). "Tradition keeps the church in contact with its own traumatic origins: the dark grace of an empty tomb" (49)
April 7, 2013
This introduction to the “negative theology” of Anglican theologian Rowan Williams, although breezily written and arranged in concise essay-like chapters devoted to different aspects of Williams’s thought, grows repetitive about two-thirds in. Negative theology, or apophasis, proceeds from a kind of existential Christian acceptance of God’s unknowability. Sublime paradoxes and contradictions that defy synthesis, while ultimately limiting philosophically, are nonetheless terrific literary devices, and it’s fascinating to read about Williams’s deep regard for King Lear, Dostoyevsky, T.S. Eliot, and Iris Murdoch.
Author Benjamin Myers is at some pains however to present Williams as a Harold Bloom-like firebrand of radical antiestablishment spiritual truths:
This is fine as far as it goes, but it goes rather more toward arguing for the power of the Bible as world-class literature than divinely inspired enterprise. And make no mistake, Rowan Williams is a master at weaving literary exegesis into his sermons. He is also an eloquent poet in his own right. His “Resurrection: Borgo San Sepolcro” (inspired by the 15th century painting Resurrection by Piero della Francesa) brings a startling naturalism and grittiness to Jesus’s bodily reanimation: “Contained, / exhausted, hungry, death running off his limbs like drops / from a shower, gathering himself.”
Myers is persuasive in outlining Williams’s emphasis on the need for Christianity to engage fully with the “brokenness” of human existence:
Again, this is great stuff, but Myers manages to misrepresent the bungled mess Williams has sometimes made in the name of outreach. Take, for instance, his defiant stance against the legalization of same-sex marriage in Britain during his tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury (2002-2012). Ignoring the controversy altogether, Myers misleadingly portrays Williams as a gay rights champion (not wholly inaccurate, but an overstatement, it seems). Myers claims that a 1989 lecture by Williams on sexuality “comes close to presenting same-sex desire as the paradigmatic form of human love.” Focusing on a lecture from over 20 years ago without taking into account Williams’s more recent remarks (which, in fairness, may have been made right around the time Myers’s book went to press) distorts what seems to have occurred: Williams became publicly less tolerant later in his career when he found himself in a high-profile leadership position within the Anglican Church.
Williams’s political thinking (and his interesting appropriation of Hegelian philosophy in developing some of his arguments) has been the subject of deeper analysis than Myers offers in Christ the Stranger. A stinging broadside by Carys Moseley (“There is a remarkable lack of critical analysis of Williams’ political theology from within Britain”) and a counterpoint defense by a Durham University Theology and Religion graduate student (Andrew Brower Latz) have certainly kept the controversies alive and well.
Benjamin Myers’s Christ the Stranger is nevertheless an indispensible beginning point. Especially if, like myself, you are a novice whose interests are perhaps more literary and secular than theological. Myers offers a treasure map pointing to countless writers, poets, painters and philosophers who have influenced Rowan Williams and who provide a grand syllabus for further reading. A notable oversight: the absence of any mention of contemporary Catholic theologian and phenomenologist Jean-Luc Marion (God Without Being), whose own apophatic theology would seem to intersect with Williams’s, particularly in regards to a shared interest in iconography and a literary appreciation for Augustine’s Confessions.
Author Benjamin Myers is at some pains however to present Williams as a Harold Bloom-like firebrand of radical antiestablishment spiritual truths:
The church tends to arrogate to itself the role of a dispenser of salvation; ecclesiastical ritual exercises this power by providing cheap spiritual consolation to the faithful. But Christian worship ought rather expose us to the particularity of Christ: his strangeness, offensiveness, and difficulty. The gospel is more like the harrowing realism of King Lear—a drama that yields up a truth only by staring unflinching into the abyss—than the inoffensive optimism of professional religiosity.
This is fine as far as it goes, but it goes rather more toward arguing for the power of the Bible as world-class literature than divinely inspired enterprise. And make no mistake, Rowan Williams is a master at weaving literary exegesis into his sermons. He is also an eloquent poet in his own right. His “Resurrection: Borgo San Sepolcro” (inspired by the 15th century painting Resurrection by Piero della Francesa) brings a startling naturalism and grittiness to Jesus’s bodily reanimation: “Contained, / exhausted, hungry, death running off his limbs like drops / from a shower, gathering himself.”
Myers is persuasive in outlining Williams’s emphasis on the need for Christianity to engage fully with the “brokenness” of human existence:
Humanness is not wholeness, self-mastery, self-containment: we are most human when we are cracked, when each self bleeds out into the lives of others.
Again, this is great stuff, but Myers manages to misrepresent the bungled mess Williams has sometimes made in the name of outreach. Take, for instance, his defiant stance against the legalization of same-sex marriage in Britain during his tenure as Archbishop of Canterbury (2002-2012). Ignoring the controversy altogether, Myers misleadingly portrays Williams as a gay rights champion (not wholly inaccurate, but an overstatement, it seems). Myers claims that a 1989 lecture by Williams on sexuality “comes close to presenting same-sex desire as the paradigmatic form of human love.” Focusing on a lecture from over 20 years ago without taking into account Williams’s more recent remarks (which, in fairness, may have been made right around the time Myers’s book went to press) distorts what seems to have occurred: Williams became publicly less tolerant later in his career when he found himself in a high-profile leadership position within the Anglican Church.
Williams’s political thinking (and his interesting appropriation of Hegelian philosophy in developing some of his arguments) has been the subject of deeper analysis than Myers offers in Christ the Stranger. A stinging broadside by Carys Moseley (“There is a remarkable lack of critical analysis of Williams’ political theology from within Britain”) and a counterpoint defense by a Durham University Theology and Religion graduate student (Andrew Brower Latz) have certainly kept the controversies alive and well.
Benjamin Myers’s Christ the Stranger is nevertheless an indispensible beginning point. Especially if, like myself, you are a novice whose interests are perhaps more literary and secular than theological. Myers offers a treasure map pointing to countless writers, poets, painters and philosophers who have influenced Rowan Williams and who provide a grand syllabus for further reading. A notable oversight: the absence of any mention of contemporary Catholic theologian and phenomenologist Jean-Luc Marion (God Without Being), whose own apophatic theology would seem to intersect with Williams’s, particularly in regards to a shared interest in iconography and a literary appreciation for Augustine’s Confessions.
September 12, 2017
helpful, clear
January 25, 2026
Great insight into William's work.
I appreciated having to read this as a primer to a course on the theology of Rowan Williams. It is a balanced look at his work.
I appreciated having to read this as a primer to a course on the theology of Rowan Williams. It is a balanced look at his work.
November 14, 2015
An engaging and highly accessible introduction to one of the most important theological voices of our time. I already knew and loved Myers from his wonderful blog at faith-theology.com, and this short book feels very much like the essays he posts over there. This is a great primer on Rowan Williams and I really enjoyed reading it.
March 10, 2014
An excellent, thoughtful read. Not only did this deepen my understanding of Rowan Williams and his theology, but offered many moments of reflection for my own thought.
Read
December 13, 2014Thoughtful exposition of Williams's theology of kenosis and tragedy. Not light reading but would be very good for Lent.
March 10, 2017
1-star.
Want to Read
November 14, 2017230.092
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews