Captivating the Captive Mind: Challenges Facing Theological Education in Post-Communist Society

Abstract

The Lithuanian born, Polish poet and 1980 Nobel laureate, Czeław Miłosz, penned a classic work, The Captive Mind (1951), detailing the allurement and existential crises the intelligentsia faced under Soviet totalitarianism. For many in post-communist societies, social realism fits well with varying forms of democratic capitalism’s privatization of faith. Consequently, little room remains for theological education beyond the limits of institutional religion. Reductionistic accounts of human personhood and views of God as absent are central to this social imaginary. The challenge for Christian theology is to address these matters creatively yet critically, communicating with charity an alternative narrative of human ontology. Hans Urs von Balthasar is one voice that does so through his theological personalism, rooted in the economic missio of Christ’s trinitarian life. He offers a creative way of envisioning humanity as captivated and constituted by its dialogical encounter with God, being drawn into the theodrama of human society.