It is my sense that I have not been alone these past several years in being deeply influenced by liberation, postliberal and revisionary movements yet puzzled also about how to bring together their best methodological and theological perspectives. These movements have drawn impressively from the powerful and forward-looking legacies of modern Christian theology. Who does not join liberation theologians in being moved by the prophetic foresight in Pope John XXIII's call for the church in the modern world to be a church of the poor? Who is unimpressed by Friedrich Schleiermacher's bold and subtle defense of religious piety in the face of religion's cultured despisers, which has inspired revisionary theology? Who does not find postliberal theology's indebtedness to Karl Barth justified in light of his masterful rendering of a strange new biblical world as a direct challenge to nationalism and other modern ills? Revisionary, postliberal and liberation theologies have been notable custodians of these modern theological legacies, precisely because of the creative ways in which they have transmuted them for the contemporary theological scene. Theology today would be well served in trying to incorporate strands of insight from these movements.

However, intermovement exchanges have not been particularly helpful to those interested in this pursuit, since theologians from these three movements have mostly squared off in ways that have produced more heat than light. For over a decade, the literature has bristled with often highly polemical comments by revisionary and postliberal theologians about each other's work.