By Christian Schumacher
Lion . 252 pages. £18.00 (hardback)
ISBN 0 7459 4042 0
This volume is an interesting attempt to produce a basic theology of work. Its author is a man with wide experience of industry and commerce, especially in the area of work planning and organisation. It is written with a deep appreciation that, for many people, the world of work is an intensely unsatisfying and even dehumanising experience. So the author longs to discover from Scripture - or, more accurately, from the nature of God - why this is and how it can be put right.
Schumacher is surely right to start from a consideration of the Triune Creator at work to establish a model for human work. However, while he is always thought-provoking and often both incisive and instructive, some of his analogies are arbitrary and overpressed. Indeed, there are places where one feels that he is looking for justification for his often helpful ideas about work in the nature of God, rather than the other way round.
