Apologetic Theology Research Articles

Theology in a new paradigm

Interview with Dmitry Shmonin, Director of the Institute of Theology of St. Petersburg University, professor of St. Petersburg Orthodox Theological Academy and ss. Cyril and Methodius Institute for Postgraduate and Doctoral Studies, Chairman of the Expert Council of the Higher Attestation Commission under the Ministry of Education and Science of Russia in Theology, editor-in-Chief of the journal “Issues of Theology”. D. V. Shmonin is devoted to the place and role of theology in the domestic academic and educational space. Topics covered include: theology and worldview; normativity of theology in modern society; confessionality of theology; the specificity of religious thinking in the three Abrahamic traditions, as well as in Buddhism; theology and religious tradition; criticism in theology as a science; the importance of ancient and medieval heritage; the specifics of the domestic experience of the presence of theology in the educational space. Questions were raised about the status of the so-called ecumenical theology and the Anglo-American “philosophy of religion” as a non-denominational apologetic theology. The relationship between the dogmatic core of theology and scientific and theological research “on the margins” of this unchanging core is discussed. The author proposes, in connection with theology, to talk about a new educational paradigm that does not repeat the ancient one, which is impossible in modern conditions, but draws valuable and relevant from it. The main task is to secure a reliable place for theology in the domestic context as an academic discipline (or a set of disciplines) within the framework of modern humanitarian knowledge, including that transmitted in the educational process. This talk is a contribution to the ongoing debate about theology as a science, both institutionally and substantively.

COVID-19, Camus, Aquinas, and Me

COVID-19, Camus, Aquinas, and Me

Ideology and Exegesis: A Response to Gerald O’Collins

Gerald O’Collins’s insistence that scholars read Paul’s encomium to Christ in Phil 2:6-11 as anticipating later Christian orthodoxy confuses theological apologetics for historical interpretation. His claim that Paul anticipates Nicene Christology is anachronistic, tendentious, and methodologically confused. Phil 2:6-11 expresses a Jewish angel Christology, not a teleological foreshadowing of Nicene orthodoxy. A close reading of O’Collins’s essay is instructive at a number of levels.

Public Moral Discourse

Public moral discourse encompasses open discussions in which moral concepts of good and right are brought to bear on questions of public policy and on broader issues of basic rights and the goals and rules that guide social institutions. These public questions also raise practical, apologetic, and political concerns that are central to Christian ethics and moral theology. Public discourse frames legal and political understandings of religious freedom, and Christian ethics has a practical interest in ensuring that these choices do not limit Christian worship and formation or unduly restrict the institutional life of the church. Public discourse also engages apologetic theology in a moral task because the questions raised in public discourse involve conceptions of human good, human nature, and human community that have been discussed in Christian theology across the centuries. Christians have a distinctive understanding of persons in society that they hope to make effective, or at least to make understood, in a wider public discussion. Finally, public moral discourse gives rise to a moral responsibility for Christian participation in politics to create a public consensus on the creation of shared human goods.

Apologetic Theology and the Challenge of Rationalism The Theological Project of Arnold Tits (1807-1851) and Louvain Traditionalism

Apologetic Theology and the Challenge of Rationalism The Theological Project of Arnold Tits (1807-1851) and Louvain Traditionalism

Miracle and Supernatural in the Gospel Narrative: the Apologetic Position of the Kyiv Theological Academy’s Professor Dmytro Bohdashevskyi (Archbishop Vasilii)

In this article, the author carries on his research into works by Dmytro Bohdashevskyi (Archbishop Vasilii, 1861–1933), the famous Professor and Rector of the Kyiv Theological Academy in the early 20th century. The paper covers Dmytro Bohdashevskyi’s theological apologetics of the miracle and the supernatural in biblical narrative. It was established that Kyiv researcher realized the synthesis of epistemological, hermeneutic, dogmatic and religious-practical components in his position. Great attention is paid to his peculiar religious phenomenology, epistemology and praxeology of the Gospel miracles. Bohdashevskyi proposed a phenomenological representation of wonderful events in the acts of life experience. Religious structures such as experiencing the miraculous and experiencing the meeting the Absolute play the most important role. The epistemological basis of Bohdashevskyi ‘s reasoning about miracle in the Bible is the affirmation of its coherence with the human mind. This coherence is based on the act of religious faith in which a sacred rationalization of a miracle takes place. This way of rationalizing Gospel miracles objectively opposes both the primitive magical and the modern rationalistic (psychological, sociological, moralistic and scientific-natural) interpretations of the miraculous. However, the Kyiv apologist sometimes finds himself vulnerable to denying the significance of the act of faith and moving beyond the theological discursiveness to which his rationalist-minded opponents resort. The researcher objectively describes the assumption of the miracle as an intrinsically problematic cognitive act, demonstrating the complexity of human cognition as one of the underlying reasons for the emergence and existence of religion. In this way, D. Bohdashevskyi came very close to the comparison of scientific and extra-scientific knowledge, rational and extra-rational components of cognitive process.Article received 15.08.2019

ПРОБЛЕМИ СИСТЕМАТИЗАЦІЇ БОГОСЛОВСЬКОЇ ТЕРМІНОЛОГІЇ В ОСВІТНЬОМУ ПРОЦЕСІ

The establishment of theology as an academic discipline raises the question of the normalization of its lexical means.Ukrainian religious vocabulary as a whole, and, in particular, its certain lexical-semantic groups referred to as “religious terms”, “church terms”, “sacred terms”, “theological terms” and others based on a subject matter, have been the subject of many linguistic studies. Of particular interest to this research are the studies focused on theological terms in the area of their usage – theological (liturgical) practice and corresponding theological texts. For instance, N.V. Puriaieva gave a characterization of the usage of the Ukrainian language in the liturgical practice of Ukrainian churches, problems of a sacred language, and the vocabulary of church service terms; B. Ogulchanskiy studied the development of Ukrainian theological terms in liturgical and theological texts from the Art Nouveau period to the present. Nevertheless, the development of theological education in Ukraine makes it important to standardize theological terms used in the education process.Considering certain historical factors, religious studies still have a great influence on the interpretation of religious concepts in the scientific community. This discipline uses the more standardized approaches allowing to use them for applied research. For example, religious studies distinguish the following beliefs about God withing theology: Jewish, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist theology, etc. Christianity is divided into Catholic, Orthodox, and Protestant theology. Eastern Orthodoxy includes apologetic theology (apologetics), biblical theology, dogmatic theology, moral or practical theology, comparative theology, etc.Compared to religious studies, the term “theology” lacks consistency in theological sources.The study and understanding of sacred texts and eminent theologians’ commentaries to them have been one of the main theological methods from the earliest times. These texts vary among confessions and even withing one church, which is especially common for Eastern Christianity.In our opinion, this analysis points to the reason for the incoherency of the modern theological terms and outlines the possible ways of eliminating it which is essential not only for theological practice but also for theological education.

The Site of Mormon Political Theology1

Mormon political theology must reconcile two distinct projects: the care for the Church's concrete, temporal existence in the World, and the welcoming of the future Kingdom of God on earth. Because of this duality, political theology finds itself highlighting the distinction between the World and the Kingdom of God and at the same time pointing out common ground and attempting to establish peace between the Church and the World. The alleged contradictions of Mormon political thought are, according to this conception, to be understood not as confrontations between idealism and brute reality (or “utopianism” and “assimilation”), but rather as the bringing together of the two goals of Mormon political reflection, pursued by two sides of political theology. These two sides, apologetic and prophetic political theology, are distinguished not by their political content, but rather by their particular kinds of political rhetoric.

New Proposals on Theological Apologetics – Faith and Its Critics: A Conversation – By David Ferguson; The Command of Grace: A New Theological Apologetics – By Paul D. Janz; Theology in Search of Foundations – By Randal Rauser

AbstractRecent titles announce a new interest on apologetics, not in the habitual format of a popular theology providing arguments to believe, but rather as a dialogical engagement with the current developments in philosophy and science. The books under exam offer an outstanding review of the meaning for theology and faith of such tendencies, the risks and challenges they pose. Nevertheless, opportunities are perceived through the ongoing dialogue as well, for a better theological endeavor.

The Command of Grace: A New Theological Apologetics – By Paul D. Janz

The Command of Grace: A New Theological Apologetics – By Paul D. Janz

Book Review: The Command of Grace: A new theological apologetics

Book Review: <b>The Command of Grace:</b> A new theological apologetics

The Reunification of Theology and Comparison in the New Comparative Theology

This paper examines the relationship between the new comparative theology and the theology of religions in light of their common genealogy in the comparative theology of the late nineteenth century. Noting that the latter's blindness to its considerable biases was sustained by its oppositional relationship with the exclusionary apologetic theology of the day, the paper argues that the new comparative theology risks repeating the same pattern of self-deception when it dichotomizes its relationship with the theology of religions. At the same time, however, the new comparative theology, by openly acknowledging its theological commitments, strips the comparative method of the aura of science which has often functioned ideologically to mask bias. In this way, the new comparative theology exemplifies the recent shift in the understanding of comparison from a method of discovery to a critical method for the testing and revision of the categories through which scholars interpret their data.

William C. Placher's Non‐apologetic Theology

William C. Placher's <i>Non</i>‐apologetic Theology

Philosophy of Religion: A State of the Subject Report

Abstract: This is the inaugural Jay Newman Memorial Lecture in Philosophy of Religion, as delivered to the Canadian Theological Society in May 2009. Its themes are four: (1) the influence of conservative Christian theology in the shaping of contemporary (broadly analytical) philosophy of religion; (2) the resulting difficulty of demarcating philosophy of religion from theology or theological apologetics; (3) the possibility of a new, more progressive evolutionary approach to philosophy of religion, and how not just theological assumptions but certain philosophical assumptions too are standing in its way; and (4) the interesting parallel between where an imaginative, evolutionary philosophy of religion might take us and certain features of non-conservative Christian theology.

Religion and morality: the crisis of traditional views

Modern theologians give the Sermon on the Mount such definitions: "the pearl of the gospel teachings," "the lecture of Christ's morality, ethics, asceticism," "a brief summary of the whole New Testament," "one of the most prominent places in the Bible." In the end, "The sermon on the other hand uplifts, by its content, ideas, character and spirit, all the teachings of the most outstanding philosophers, humanists, prophets, and moralists to this day." Of course, these definitions are perceived primarily as being related to the apologetic theology to which we are treated with respect.

Gott – Anschauen – Üben

According to the of Ignatius di Loyola the author discusses the principle and fundament of systematic theology. His essential categories are Anschauung (visio Dei) and the personal face of redemption. Firstly, God is no object or product of metaphysical or transcendental-logical argumentation but the first and ultimate historical date of theology. Transcendental argumentation reflects on God's revelation in creation and history and demonstrates its plausibility (the author discusses some new aspects of German Transcendental Theology). Secondly, since Anschauung proceeds and exceeds the transcendental Begriff, it is necessary to sense and to explore God's actual presence in his creation and redemption (the classical topic of Roman-Catholic Fundamentaltheologie or theological apologetics is analysis fidei). Thirdly, the eyes of faith are to be trained. Die Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius and the biblical christology of Martin Luther coincide in this regard. Both refuse to reduce God's redemption in Jesus Christ to a mere idea. This might be an essential corrective to some tendencies within recent systematic theology.

The dichotomization of the christological paradox in the history of Christian thought and critical biblical scholarship

Again and again throughout the historyof Christian thought theological apologetics has dissolved the great ironic paradox of Jesus Christ into binary oppositions. In these historical contexts cultural relevancy has prevailed, and the underlying philosophical ideology has generated a disastrous subversion of the apologetic formulations of Christology in the New Testament. By calling this dichotomization into question, this essay intends to promote a postmodern hermeneutics that preserves the christological paradox and orients the constituting consciousness of theologians and scholars to both a spirituality of "being-affected-by" the biblical witness to Jesus Christ and a faith that will initiate action toward the transformation of society.

Romans 4 as Apologetic Theology

In recent years, scholars have maintained that sections of the genuine Pauline epistles (especially 1 and 2 Corinthians) and even entire epistles are selfapologies in which Paul defends his apostleship. In the ancient sources, the term “apology” is not restricted to self-defense; the most characteristic Jewish Hellenistic apologies were propaganda on behalf of the law rather than an author's defense against personal accusations. Some fifty years ago, Günther Bornkamm proposed that Paul adapted and modified Jewish Hellenistic apologetic traditions in Rom 1:18 — 3:21. For the most part the thesis of Bornkamm's article and its implications for interpreting Romans have been benignly neglected; even those who accept it only emphasize its pertinence specifically for Romans 1–3. Ernst Käsemann, for instance, believes that with Romans 4, Paul fully embraces “rabbinic methods” and other more traditional Jewish modes of argumentation. This article challenges Käsemann's claim and affirms that Romans 4 is best understood as apologetic theology.

Atheism, Apologetic, and Negative Theology in the Greek Apologists of the Second Century

Atheism, Apologetic, and Negative Theology in the Greek Apologists of the Second Century

Book Review: III. Philosophy and Apologetics: The Faith of a Modern Christian

Book Review: III. Philosophy and Apologetics: The Faith of a Modern Christian