This highly anticipated book comes seven years after Rambo's Spirit and Trauma (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox, 2010), which distinguished her as a leading theologian of trauma. There, Rambo brought trauma theory to bear on the Christian redemption narrative and exhorted theologians to remain with survivors amid the irresolute suffering of Holy Saturday rather than rushing to the joyous healing of resurrection.
Resurrecting Wounds is in many respects a sequel. It continues Rambo's reflection on trauma, focusing on the intergenerational trauma born of US white supremacy and the psychological scars of US veterans. Because she does not frame these examples within an in-depth overview of trauma theory, as in her previous book, this book is best read after her first book or at least after the reader has foundational knowledge of trauma theory.
The book's theological focus also positions it as a sequel. Whereas Spirit and Trauma centered on Holy Saturday, this book meditates on the subsequent resurrection appearances in John 20. Rambo's intertextual readings of the glorified and still-wounded body of Christ trouble a linear read of this gospel sequence, however. Healing is not a clean break. Christ's marked body discloses the enduring presence of suffering's wounds within resurrected life. In fact, wounds serve as ongoing sites of resurrection, though not in the instrumental fashion of redemptive suffering.
Rambo offers alternative visions of suffering and healing across the book's chapters, each of them bringing a Johannine resurrection scene together with one or more textual interlocutors. The introduction exposes the limits of standard Christian resurrection narratives through a compelling reflection on the French television series Les Revenants. Chapter 1 interrogates the erasure of Christ's wounds from the glorified body in Calvin's commentary on the exchange between Thomas and the resurrected Christ. Chapter 2 centers on Gregory of Nyssa's hagiography of Macrina, a christic figure whose scar is both a sign and a site of resurrection in life. For Rambo, its vision of suffering and healing exemplifies for feminists how to theologize suffering and redemption while resisting redemptive suffering. Chapter 3 examines the Upper Room where the risen Christ encounters the disciples and bequeaths to them the Holy Spirit. The wounds that surface before Thomas and the rest of Christ's followers spur a collective remembrance of the history of Christ's suffering. This scene captures the necessity of collectively addressing the “hidden wounds” of our time—namely, the distorted social imagination and violence that structures US white supremacy. Caravaggio's famous painting, The Incredulity of Thomas, provides the biblical touchstone of Chapter 4. Like this painting, which places Christ's wounds at the center, a US veteran support group that Rambo studies facilitates healing through its communal focus on the psychological wounds of veterans. In this group, however, it is the wounds of all participants, veterans and civilians alike, that compose the scene, and while accompanying one another, collective healing transpires. This provides another hermeneutic for resurrection in the Upper Room and in our lives.
The breadth and creativity of Rambo's intertextual analysis is exciting, and her multivalent reading of John 20 will undoubtedly spur reflection on suffering, resurrection, and salvation. The book requires patience, however, because Rambo's central arguments are sometimes unclear as she interlaces multiple texts across these wide-ranging chapters. Contributing to the elusiveness of her constructive proposals is the absence of a unified critique of healing and resurrection. While she alludes to the problems of redemptive suffering in some chapters and inadequate portraits of resurrection in others, they are not linked coherently. She thus misses an opportunity to clarify her views relative to others.
These difficulties may result from a shift in Rambo's theological style: Resurrecting Wounds is like a theo-poetic meditation on Christ's resurrection wounds, whereas her first book reflected the more common linear progression of academic theological argumentation. Though Rambo's present style left me desirous of greater clarity at times, it also occurred to me that, more than ever, her medium matches her message. After all, she continues to challenge theology's intellectual habits and our tendencies to rush through theological difficulties. With this book, in both its content and form, Rambo invites us to remain, and in the process, to be transformed.
