Anselm GRÜN and Leonardo BOFF. Becoming New: Finding God Within Us and in Creation. Orbis Books, 2019. pp. 168. $20.00 pb. ISBN 1-626-98331-3. Reviewed by Vincent WARGO, University of Saint Francis, Fort Wayne, IN 46808.

It is rare today in our current socio-political climate to have a book or any work for that matter where both sides make a gesture of mutual accommodation and recognition of each other. Becoming New is different in this respect.  It is a thoughtful encounter and fruitful exchange between Anselm, a German Benedictine monk, and Leonardo Boff a Brazilian liberation theologian and philosopher. The starting point for this exchange is a basic agreement by both thinkers on fundamental principles:  (1) that the essence of the unfathomable God is love,and (2) that the traditional categories of immanence and transcendence alone are not adequate to express the full nature of our spiritual existence which requires in addition the notion of transparency of all things towards the divine.

The idea of transparency brings both men into the orbit of a properly Franciscan spirituality modeled on the life of St. Francis. While this is the shared goal, each writer forges his own path to this final destination. Grün’s approach begins with a reflection of God as person or hypostasis in Greek, and shows how our sense of self and the awareness of God are intimately linked. The strength of Grün’s approach is that it is experiential in character so that the reader recognizes the signs of his or her own longing for God. By focusing on the self, Grün is able to marshal the resources and insights of the mystical tradition of the West, scriptural passages and 20th Century theologians and psychologists like Karl Rahner and Carl Jung to create an overall picture of the self’s relation to God. Alternatively, Boff begins with a cosmological or what he prefers to call a “cosmogenetic” account of spirituality. The latter emphasizing the incomplete, dynamic, evolving, open whole that constitutes creation. The persuasiveness of Boff’s approach is that it lays emphasis on the interconnectedness of all things to each other and to God. Whereas Grün’s text marshals the mystical tradition, Boff’s approach seeks to create a dialogue with modern science to lay the foundation for an ecological spirituality. The important voices of Boff’s text are those of physicists, anthropologists and theologians like David Bohm, Thomas Berry and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin.One recognizes in Boff’s text the clear attempt at creating a spirituality that could serve as a proper foundation for social and environmental activism. Although somewhat reticence in his use of magisterial documents and traditional theological resources, Boff clearly endorses of Pope Francis’ encyclical Laudatosi as setting the church’s discussion on environmental matters in the right direction.

The combination of both views makes for fascinating reading and an excellent classroom resource to spark discussions about the dual nature of contemporary Western spirituality. The chief criticism of the text wouldbe that, at times, Boff’s exposition of his ideas is not entirely clear so that the reader wonders if the strong emphasis he places on the material description of the universe makes Boff a monist in the spinozistic tradition. This is only cleared up later in the text. Secondly, Boff’s dependence and interpretation of scientific theories makes him subject to any revision of these theories. For example, Boff claims that evolution is directed to producing ever more complex forms of life rather than exploiting ecological niches. From a purely scientific perspective such a directedness in evolution must be denied. However, if what Boff means by complexity refers to a more spiritual interpretation of evolution along the lines of a “Universal Christ” or “Omega point” of Teilhard de Chardin, then perhaps a more generous reading can be given. Additionally, some readers may also be taken back by Boff’s use of terms like “Quantum Vacuum,” “Pregnant Void” or “Fundamental Energy” to speak of the presence and power of God as the source of all beings as seeming overly scientific in their formulation.