As early as 1975 when she delivered an address to the American Teilhard Association, the author found herself in search of "an experiential/conceptual/social shift," a theme which stamps her scholarly production of a dozen books plus a hundred articles in the International Philosophical Quarterly, Cross Currents, and Cistercian Studies. That concern is revisited in various contexts, emphasizing different things, drawing different lessons. This book synthesizes many strands of her interests—the scientific (physics, biology, anthropology, sociology) and religious (Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, and Christian) as it finally draws up a social, psychological, and metaphysical proposal which is both integrated and congenial to Scripture—a mystic and social transformation which, she explains, feeds from both the Jesus Movement and the Jewish Renewal Movement.

The argument is rather straightforward. At the paradigmatic level, all persons are to be seen as children of God. Systematically, the strategy is embodied in the Holy Thursday stories of equality (foot-washing) and communion (supper). Negatively, the envisioned ethics is to be one of unconditional and undifferentiated respect, erasing all discriminatory distinctions based on race, gender, sex, religion, class, wealth, power, status, and the like. Positively, one should work towards relationships based on communion, friendship, distribution, partnership, and reciprocity instead of the prevailing domination, exploitation, accumulation, and force.

Part I examines domination as a worldview from a threefold perspective: political, psychological, and metaphysical. At the first level, domination is about the ills of the world due to politics, defined simply as "the art of living together in human society" (p3). Here she focuses primarily on the microcosmic and highly interpersonal dimensions of politics rather than on the global and international, argues that the politics of domination is a function of a worldview that is shaped by a consciousness-net at the person-to-person level, and concludes that it is only there that change can and must occur. In this worldview, we fail to perceive the neighbor as ourselves, cannot love accordingly, and thus engage in domination. "Domination is an asymmetrical, nonreciprocal, relation of determination of being: of the fact that a being is, or of what it is, or of how it can act, or of how it is to be valued" (pp8, 30). Plentiful illustrations can be found in war, tyranny, economic oppression, slavery, classism, sexism, and so on.

Read at another level domination is about the psychology of insecurity, with its manifestations in mastery, competition, and comparison. Why do we persist in this frame of mind? The author discards bad will, pure evil, supernatural agency, and disobedience as causes but traces it to fear—fear of not being as full as we can be, and fear of not being anymore (p38). The thesis of the book is thus clarified: "While rank ordering and domination have been the rule in the course of evolution and have been selected for because of advantages to socially developing animals, human beings, with consciousness capable of empathy and ethical responsibility, can live by another set of operating principles" (p28). Recall, for example, the second creation at Sinai, with the Torah symbolizing that new set of principles to live by.

Those three readings become the context for retelling the meaning of Jesus’ ministry in light of Holy Thursday. Accordingly, Part I concludes with the story of Jesus, focused on "the baptismal vision, the social expression, and the Suppers." She traces Jesus’ revolutionary transformation in what others have called the "Abba experience," except that the theological focus is not on the nature of God as Parent but on the mystical insight into being "the child of God" with all that this morally implies for social relationships. It is that experience which will enable us to break every discriminatory boundary—social, religious, economic, sexual, political, ritual, ethnic, and so forth. In the foot-washing, Jesus broke radically with the Lord-master relationship. His strategy of open commensality introduced radical egalitarianism. He celebrated abundance rather than scarcity. Going beyond reform and development, he inaugurated an authentic revolution.

Trapped by its self-descriptions, the self competes with the other as enemy for fullness of being; in contrast, Jesus offers unconditional regard based on divine filiation. Such is the Communion paradigm: "a symmetrical, reciprocal relation of enhancement of being: that beings may be, may become all that they can be, may act in maximum freedom and be valued for their incomparable preciousness" (p70).

Finally, she explains that revolution is "a total social process and has to include worldview and social, political, economic, and cultural dimensions." The key is the basic outlook with its principles; once those change, all dimensions change. Given its irenic qualities, however, this revolution is different. "It is usually thought that a revolution means conflict, but that is not true of this revolution" (p103).

Part III raises the question whether domination is part of nature and whether it is permeable to change. Are domination, social ranking, competition, and conflict so "hard-wired" into human nature that conversion to communion is nothing but a utopian dream? Chapter 7 examines this from various perspectives: biochemistry, molecular physics, and sociobiology. Does it have genetic roots in human biological nature, or has it become part of human cultural nature by way of memes? The contrary position argues that domination cannot be changed because it is part of nature. Even if it could be changed, the change cannot guarantee better results. Even with better results, the change might not be desirable, proof of which is the global failure of communism.

Chapter 8 recognizes that the transition from domination to friendship may not be possible at the political or psychological levels, but insists that it is possible on other, natural bases and in fact is already occurring today. War is giving way to peace, racism to equality, ethnocentrism to globalization, competition to symbiosis, and mistrust to empathy. Summoning like-minded sociobiologists to her cause, she argues that aggression is not innate, that class struggle can change with co-ownership, that organization is moving from pyramid to network, and that sharing is replacing taking. In short, it is the nature of nature to change, be this at the level of thinking, valuing, or practice. The human being is the self-changing being; what is often taken as nature is merely socialization into a particular worldview. Academic economics and ordinary housekeeping operate according to different models of human behavior, while game theory and computer simulation evidence the fact that mutual care and cooperation are better options than competition and rivalry. At heart, we really want to be liberated from Egypt and its domination paradigm; basically, what we seek is entrance into the Promised Land with its communion paradigm through the Torah of Sinai.

Chapter 9 then talks of memes (our cultural concepts of identity and success), mysticism (where the transformation must take place), and phase transitions (operating by a new set of principles). The change must involve everyone, victim as well as exploiter. The foundational and method memes of success must be replaced with the foot-washing and communion memes. It takes a mystic to grasp the ultimate security which liberates for this conversion. When we make spirituality our overriding concern, we will also discover the security which generates empathy. Phase transition then follows. Engaging in this will take perhaps tens of thousands of years (p180), which is nothing in comparison with the billions of years it took us to get here (p260).

This section sums up by noting that the giving of the Torah/Teaching at Sinai is only one such phase transition (pp182ff). God reveals himself to us gradually, in the measure that we open gate upon gate of our selves to understanding and vision. The Decalogue is the Proclamation of social transformation through liberation because those ten statements are not commandments but announcements of a new set of operating principles. With this, the world is infused with holiness and God finds a home through our acts of covenanting with God and with others. In that sense, Sinai is a phase transition for cosmogenesis, the creation of a new world, as is Holy Thursday.

The living experience of God is the core of the Communion paradigm, with ethical behavior as its efflorescence. Part IV draws a wide-ranging array of lessons for the envisioned covenant community under equally diverse motivations: Jesus, the Torah, friendship, and ecotheology. Was the supposed "Jesus program" also historical? Looking at the stories about Jesus, the author concludes that what distinguished them from similar stories about religious founders were his relationships with the marginalized. Jesus offers marginals the same respect that he accords his close friends or powerful figures. He is never deferential, contemptuous, or condescending to anyone. Since such traits do not add to his heroic stature, or strengthen his claims to divinity, or even model behavior for his followers, the only reason they were told is because they were historical: Jesus did behave in this original way. His mission was based on a no-exceptions social equality; his program is that he does this as if it were the most normal thing in the world; it is our conventions about domination and inequality that are the aberrations. Jesus made people hope that they can change their consciousness and social relations—the Sermon on the Mount detailing the necessary attitudes. The ethics and economics already realized in family must be replicated society-wide until the critical mass is reached so that the systemic values themselves change. All of this is merely a matter of commonsense, not even revelation. All of us together, she says at the end, are the Messiah. "We have to do it ourselves; it has to come from the inside out" (p264).

As this summary indicates, this book is carefully developed, its structure clear and logical, all in all making for a highly readable book. The writing is highly articulate, the prose flowing, and the cadence occasionally poetic, far from technically academic in tenor. Sophisticated, immersed in various bodies of literature, the author is able to integrate a variety of insights into her thesis or cast them in innovative ways. Much in evidence is the broad and deep background in the natural sciences and mathematics on the one hand, and on Vedanta Buddhism and Catholic Christianity on the other. The referencing is extensive; occasionally a single note extends to almost a page, constituting a commentary by itself. Interestingly it is the least footnoted chapter that provides most interest, as it also seems to be the most original. Finally, one must agree with her repeated insistence that people are the bottom line: all our work must be aimed at ending their oppression and commodification.

On the other hand, integrating such a variety of intellectual traditions and attempting to be as inclusive as possible inevitably leads to a breadth that, while ecumenically inspirational, is also programmatically brittle. It is not only the bibliography that is eclectic but also the method, which alternates between the rational and spiritual, the philosophical and mystical. Perhaps it is inevitable that the net result is a proposal that is only as logical as its assumptions.

Bruteau’s is a powerful and synthetic mind at work, even if one might not always agree with its direction. Occasionally, the text starts off on a promising line of analysis, but does not bring it to conclusion (e.g., the psychology of inequality, naturalness of domination, male aggressivity, and complicity of the submissive). One wonders whether less illustration and more analysis would have helped the argument better. Would it not have been more fruitful, after introducing every conceivable explanation, finally to take a clear position on the most reasonable theory? There are many strands of thought here, perhaps too many, each of which would have been challenging enough to consolidate by itself.

Put differently, the risk that an ecumenical approach assumes is that it often results in a less than solid theology (pp51-66). Whereas, a critical task for theology is the attempt to reconcile all the contradictions of its canonical texts, that problem has been dispensed with here, since only what is compatible has been chosen as material to the proposition. One may even be unsure how to classify this as theology (its own CIP options locates it under Christian sociology). Systematic theologians may find it stimulating yet wanting in terms of doctrinal orthodoxy. For example, the Jesus from whom one draws inspiration not only preached about communion but also about sin and final judgment, neither of which is seriously addressed here. Furthermore, the power of Jesus to inspire resides not only in his revolutionary teaching but also in the witness of his death on the cross and the hope consolidated by his resurrection. Theological ethicists will observe that it offers no theoretical contributions to the contemporary issue of the differences between collaborative, collective, social, and structural sin. Casuists will point out that it merely affirms and asserts rather than argues and persuades as to its practical applications. This proposal, she admits, demands sustained "meditation" (p54), indicating thereby that it is probably best read as parenesis, homiletics, or spirituality.

All the same, to reduce this to a text of spirituality would not quite do justice to the complex texture of the philosophical and theological issues it raises. In Part II most authors focusing on the ego would usually distinguish between nature and person. Thomas would have resorted to something similar to make the distinction between exitus and reditus. Our author offers the distinction between person and personality, the former standing for being per se (essential being) and the latter standing for being in a certain mode (being with its accidents of gender, race, class, etc.). As applied to Nicodemus, the personality is what needs to be laid aside as being born from below, in favor of the person, which is born of God or from above. This makes good theological sense, but how one comes to this as an independent philosophical discovery (p74), she does not explain. This is but one example of how Bruteau intrigues as a theologian and perplexes as a philosopher—the point is welcome as exhortation but less so as argumentation. The theological explanation presupposes faith as well as grace to be meaningful, but philosophical argument cannot lead into either. What philosophy can do is to show that both expectations are not unreasonable. If the author intended to provide an independent philosophy of faith and grace, she has not advanced enough persuasive reasons to do so. Along a similar vein, is it truly possible to have a secular faith inspired by Jesus and issuing in his distinctive ethic?

At the level of philosophical ethics, the book also takes us into the unfinished debate between the personalist and the structuralist approaches to social change, that is to say, whether change should first occur at the individual personal level and thence proceed towards structural and societal change or vice-versa. The personalist approach is by now classical, and Bruteau’s argument is a worthy contribution to the collection; her analysis of various types of domination in Part I is particularly helpful. Perichoresis and agape in the key of physics and Teilhard also seemed to hold most of the promise for a novel contribution to this method, only to disappoint because it leads off not into the practical issues but to its preferred domain of interiority. As with other instances, the proposal is evidently possible only because the starting point is the mystery of the Trinity itself rather than humankind as such.

On the other hand, the author is perfectly aware that the structural approach has its values. Evil, like war or racism, at a certain point begins to take on a life of its own and becomes impersonal; where then does one begin to challenge the conscience? Even those sympathetic with personalist approaches must concede that these have not proven to be socially effective in a generalized sense. Where, if ever, was the new paradigm ever realized on a large scale? Assuming it was, as in the case of Jesus or Francis, was this always meant to be no more than episodic and marginal? Against what criteria can they be considered to have succeeded, and how can they be replicated? What factors made them fail again after their initial success, so that these can be avoided?

Of course our world is symbolic, i.e., a human construct, and to that extent within our capacity to change. But it is also objective and resistant to change. Between the personal and structural we have a complex "intermediate world" that is built of symbols upon objective reality—one which cannot be so easily changed unilaterally. Even where there’s no one living there, a house is still a house, even if it’s no longer a home. The world is still our world even when its inhabitants live in mutual fear. The author admits that revolutions must be both moral and technological or practical, and while the moral is prior, the technological must make the moral feasible, and even so there is no guarantee that this will happen (pp104-7). In that light, analysis of motivation for domination can and should not be conflated with the planning of counteraction for communion.

In sum, a feature that the reader finds somewhat distracting is the tendency for the metaphysical to transit into the religious as if they were indistinct planes. Philosophy inexplicably becomes theology (pp47-50). Or is this where theology/spirituality begins? This would not have been a problem were we not given the impression in the Preface that this book would offer a philosophy that theology would find congenial to build upon; the issue is raised only because what we find on subsequent reading is apparently a philosophy that was theologically premised all the while.

The theistic position is that only a religious transformation can provoke the moral and social revolution the author is proposing. Yet religious history itself is evidence that mere assertion will not suffice to make its ideals real. How does this or any paradigm shift occur? How should it occur for so many that the revolution can really happen? The author describes clearly what happens when one has integrated the Communion paradigm; the question is how does one arrive at this full-depth conversion? Surprisingly, the call to believe in a God who is Parent of all does not advert nor touch the issues of theodicy, where sickness and suffering, pain and frustration, misery and death raise all kinds of questions about God’s existence and nature.

She is well aware of Gutierrez’s argument for "a scientific and structural knowledge of social-economic dynamics" in contrast to her own advocacy of a "mystical transformation" capable of recognizing the imago in every other human being, thus becoming capable of acting accordingly in terms of equality and generosity (p288, fn1). Yet such references to liberation theology suggest a perspective shaped by a comfortable and privileged social location; it fails to echo the urgencies from below, or the perspectives of the poor, deprived, and oppressed. Her claim that conflict is not true of the revolution she is proposing is truly astounding not only for liberation theologians but for third world theologians in general, for whom conflict is a problem in all the senses cited. Jesus himself was a victim of his own revolution and the conflict it generated. True revolutions swallow their authors, no matter how irenic they may be.

She is not alone in her visionary dream; the Gospel itself presents a powerful vision without corresponding strategies and plans. Although perfectly aware of this (e.g., pp214-5), she insists that a tit-for-tat strategy will work, and that family dynamics, for example, can be transposed directly into secondary communities, whole regions, countries, the world, and the planet. But is it really the case that conflicts based on language, food customs, and cultural differences will dissolve by mere respectful caring? Does the aftermath of the Filipino revolt at EDSA, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of apartheid in South Africa, or the demise of communism validate such optimism? Strategies like the Hague Agenda for Peace and Justice are hopeful instruments, but not too many will stake their lives on them. Hence the constant refrain is "if," in the sense that "if" we can get the communion paradigm across, "then …."

This is not to deny that there have been and will continue to be small pockets of fulfillment—in religious institutes, countercultures, covenanted communities, microcredit movements, and so on. But these will be mini-revolutions rather than generalized transformations. In Catholic social ethics the route of charity is given its due, without ever discounting the resistance of evil and hence the need for justice; it has also recognized the complexity of determining the common good in practice. The author gives the impression that if we choose to be good, then we will be good; common experience shows that neither intent nor investment is an effective guarantee of the same. Not even the saints succeeded, as Paul confesses poignantly. "I do not understand my own action. For I do not do what I want, but I do the very thing I hate" (Rom 7:15). Not even the primitive Christian community was able to survive its first experimentation with communal sharing. Hence, contrary to her claim that all this is merely commonsense logic, my impression is that it is a matter of faith. Is such a vision achievable only by oneself, or can it only be expected from God? Catholicism at least admits the mystery of evil and sin at the very outset, proclaiming that, contrary to the Pelagian position, God’s kingdom is a matter not only of pure human effort but also of God’s gracious will to enable and to save.

Initially, the author’s optimism is undeterred by the objections. Still, the fact is that for every possible affirmation she can cite for the realization of the communion paradigm, there are negative examples that can be summoned for the other side. Indeed, the emergence of India and China as superpowers, the challenges of unending religious conflicts, the renewed nuclear arms race, and the like are introducing unknown tensions into our global concerns. The possibilities of the internet should not obscure the fact of the digital divide. The emphasis on advances in health and economics should not distract from the unsolved problems of hunger and exploitation. The threats of global warming and demographic winter do not provide us the luxury of millennia for the awaited paradigm shift. Individual prophets will be needed, but state and industrial action as well. Again psychology and mysticism can provide insight and motivation, but by themselves will not be enough. For alternative systems to come to birth, political strategies must be articulated and these in turn translated into social and cultural tactics.

"So we come back to the transformation of individuals and thereby the beginning of the transformation of systems and institutions—and the willingness to believe that it can be done. Believing has, to some extent, to come first. It is very hard to act without believing that the action will be productive. But it may take a lot of acting for a long time, and the believing has to be strong enough to carry us through that time without flagging" (p247). There is much valid insight here for global ethics; but like every moral effort, it will require extraordinary effort from everyone without exception. It will begin with making spirituality our overriding concern. It will happen only if we act to make it happen. The Kingdom will not come by itself.