Development Of Theology Research Articles

Bridging the Divide: The Crucifixion in Endo’s The Samurai

Abstract This article situates Shusaku Endo’s novel, The Samurai, within postwar theological developments both within his Japanese context and as a consequence of the Catholic Church’s Vatican Council II. Read against this background, The Samurai demonstrates Endo’s wager that the symbol of the crucifix is translatable across cultures. His novel depicts the core Catholic belief that the crucifixion paradoxically reveals God’s Divine Love to humanity through an image of weakness and death, but Endo decentres the Western theological tradition of atonement to reimagine the crucifixion as a manifestation of Jesus’s solidarity and accompaniment with those who are rejected and unjustly oppressed.

09. A Review of Iqbal's Artistic and Theological Evolution in the Light of Obsolete Baang-E-dara

It has been analyzed in this essay that when Allama Iqbal published his first poetic collection “Bang-e-Dara”, it became very popular as it was keenly selected. What was its reasons? What were the aspects owing to which his inclination towards poems & Odes kept on varying of which poems did he change the titles and changed the words and lines? Due to that when ‘Bang-e-Dara’ was published, his imagination was at its peak. This has also been analyzed and tried to find out the reasons he discarded 55% of his poetic work. This has also been highlighted that the poetry of which era was largely amended by Iqbal.

Late-Medieval Catechesis and the Credo

The period from 1300 to 1500 witnessed an explosion in the composition and popularity of monophonic Creed melodies. The development of this corpus of about seventy such hymns paralleled a growing religious and cultural interest in the Creed. Specifically, this interest was manifest in three primary areas of late medieval religious life-catechism, devotion, and liturgy. In this article, I focus on the catechetical dimension of the Creed, and argue that the Creed’s role as an object of religious catechesis can help to explain the emergence of the new musical settings, which perhaps aimed to buttress memorization and understanding of the text. I examine the changing role of the Creed as an object of catechesis, specifically noting how it became an important marker of faith in the wake of the development of academic theology in the twelfth century. This emphasis by twelfthcentury theologians led to ecclesial movements in the thirteenth century that promoted lay participation in the faith through the Creed, which in turn resulted in devotional, artistic, literary, and musical productions of the Creed in the fourteenth century. Highlighting these catechetical and artistic creations that focus on the Creed helps to contextualize the flourishing of its musical settings in the late Middle Ages.

Navigating Post-Truth and Alternative Facts: Religion and Science as Political Theology

Navigating Post-Truth and Alternative Facts: Religion and Science as Political Theology

The Hours of the Universe: Reflections on God, Science, and the Human Journey

THE HOURS OF THE UNIVERSE: Reflections on God, Science, and the Human Journey by Ilia Delio. Maryknoll, NY: Orbis Books, 2021. 242 pages, index. Paperback; $25.00. ISBN: 9781626984035. *In this exquisitely constructed book, Delio reveals the current state of her reflections on the central concern of her life and work: the relationship of God, humanity, and the universe in the context of the evolutionary process. Her unscripted career leading to this publication, narrated in her memoir Birth of a Dancing Star: My Journey from Cradle Catholic to Cyborg Christian, has exhibited the same sort of development and diversity that she finds woven into the fabric of the universe. A Franciscan sister who began her religious life as a cloistered member of the Carmelite order, Delio earned doctorates in pharmacology and historical theology and has taught at Trinity College, Washington Theological Union, Georgetown University, and Villanova University. Today, she is an award-winning author, best known for her Center for Christogenesis, which seeks to promote dialogue between faith and reason and stimulate a Christian spirituality fully infused with evolutionary consciousness. *Communicating the urgent need and prospects for that kind of spirituality is the burden of this, Delio's twentieth, book. A theology whose starting point is not evolution and the story of the universe, she insists, is a "useless fabrication" (p. xvi). Her work is rich in scriptural references, but the call to restore the book of nature to its primacy as the true first testament in Christianity's sacred canon is one of her signature themes. Though she displays no interest in apologetics or polemics, her basic assumption is the distinctively Catholic principle of the revelatory character of creation, a conviction at odds with the Protestant Reformers' suspicion of natural theology. A robust sacramental imagination permeates the entire book and provides its organizational design. Portraying the universe as the "new monastery" (p. xvii), Delio orders her reflections according to the liturgy of the hours that has structured daily prayer in Christian monastic communities for centuries: Matins, Lauds, Prime, Terce, Sext, None, Vespers, and Compline. Delio clusters her chapters--along with prologues of original poetry--around these times of contemplation and guides the reader through the prayers of one rotation of the earth and toward what she calls a new synthesis of faith and science. *Delio's thirty-two brief chapters, each a free-standing essay, cover a broad spectrum of topics from the cosmic to the autobiographical--from quantum physics, gravitational waves, and artificial intelligence to the Eucharist during the coronavirus pandemic and the death of her beloved cat Mango. Delio addresses a number of social issues such as racism, consumerism, and homophobia and sets the full scope of her reflections against the backdrop of the threat of climate change. Her main objective is the nurturing of a Christianity mature enough to match the achievements and insights of contemporary science. In this effort, her primary dialogue partners include interfaith scholar Beatrice Bruteau, Passionist priest and self-styled geologian Thomas Berry, Hindu-Catholic mystic Raimon Panikkar, and luminaries from her elected Franciscan tradition such as Saint Francis, Bonaventure, and the contemporary spiritual writer and retreat leader Richard Rohr. Pope Francis's unprecedented encyclical on creation care, Laudato Si', is a constant touchstone for Delio, but pride of place in her personal communion of saints is granted to the Jesuit paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, whose transposition of Catholic Christianity into an evolutionary key animates virtually every page of the book. *Delio's essays orbit this Teilhardian view of things like planets in an intellectual galaxy characterized by both order and chaos. The overall effect is a prophetic warning regarding the irrelevance and near-obsolescence of any Christian system fixated on the categories of Aristotelian or Newtonian worldviews. Like her monastic and mendicant forebears, Delio calls for church reform and creative thinking. The dominant mood of the book, though, is a blend of hope and awe, even audacity. Delio's conclusion equates the rise of a "new species with a new God consciousness" (p. 240) with the second coming of Christ. *Delio's engaging book is limited by its scant attention to the menacing side of science and technology, its failure to reckon seriously with the dramatic rise of nonreligion that calls her privileging of Christian myth into question, its overestimation of the general reader's science literacy, and its tendency to align scholarly and homiletic modes of communication too closely and too uncritically. Readers seeking linear arguments for theistic evolution or Christian pantheism will have to look elsewhere. Clergy, advanced students, and believing specialists in theology and the natural sciences will find a provocative and prayerful statement of a unique Christian cosmology that informs and inspires. *Reviewed by Peter A. Huff, Professor of Religious Studies and Director of the Center for Benedictine Values, Benedictine University, Lisle, IL 60532.

Nicholas Afanasiev’s Concept of Eucharistic Ecclesiology and Its Theological Impact

precis: A productive area of scholarship of the Russian Religious Renaissance is the reconsideration of the “two schools” dichotomy that has been broadly thought of as an explanation of its development. A better way to approach its study, however, is in a comprehensive way capturing critical details that escape the attention of crude categorizations. An aspect in which this is relevant is the development of the notion of eucharistic ecclesiology. Coined by Nicholas Afanasiev, it was an effort to reveal the eucharistic nature of unity in the church and, as such, its Christ-centeredness. In so doing, he effected a change in how the unity of the church is conceived. Afanasiev had a profound impact on the role of the Orthodox Church in the ecumenical movement. Highlighting this revives knowledge of the development of eucharistic ecclesiology in the modern Orthodox Church. Among Afanasiev’s contemporaries, Paul Evdokimov was influenced by this, adapting it to real-life situations in which knowledge of the centrality of the eucharist was relevant. In an ecumenical setting, the study of Afanasiev and Evdokimov offers the prospect of theological development in the present and the promise of the revival of productive engagement that has been beset by problems in recent decades.

The Work of Community in Raposa's Theosemiotic

The Work of Community in Raposa's Theosemiotic

UST’s Contribution to the Development of Moral Theology in the Philippines

The paper discusses the contribution of the University of Santo Tomas (UST), particularly of the Faculty of Sacred Theology, to the development of Moral Theology in the Philippines. It traces the foundations of UST’s Moral Theology tradition from the Thomistic Aristotelian tradition of the Dominicans who taught this discipline in UST. It also talks of missionary catechesis as a method in moral theology, and of the manualist moral theology. It moreover discusses the development of moral theology after the Second Vatican Council. It will end with a mention of the emergence of Bioethics, treated as a theological moral discipline, and the introduction of the Salamanca process in the teaching and research of Moral Theology. It concludes with a presentation of how the professors of moral theology in the University responded to the challenges posed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Two Condemnations of Sergei Bulgakov

ABSTRACT This article uses the personal diaries and memoirs of Archpriest Sergius (Sergei) Bulgakov to examine the circumstances of his expulsion from Bolshevik-occupied Crimea in late 1922. At the time, he was rector of the Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Yalta. The expulsion of Fr. Sergius was part of a large-scale operation to expel the humanist intelligentsia, who did not fit within the ideological contours of the new government. We will examine the political aspects of the condemnations of Fr. Sergius’s doctrine of Sophia, the theological development of which he began in exile. We will also examine aspects of Fr. Sergius’s attitude to monarchy and his belief in the “white tsar,” noting that Bulgakov’s position as an émigré could hardly be characterized as monarchical. Sophiology may be the political equivalent of ecclesiastical democracy, of faith in the ecclesiastical people and the Christian community, which was alien to the conservative monarchism of Orthodox believers abroad, centered in Serbia’s Sremski Karlovci. We will examine the circumstances of the church’s condemnation of Fr. Sergius, which took place against the context of canonical uncertainty, and we will touch upon some aspects of the contemporary reception of Sophiology in Russia in a political context (V. Bibikhin, O. Kirichenko).

Scholasticism as a Systematic European Philosophy of the Middle Ages

The article examines the contribution of the greatest encyclopedic mind of antiquity - Aristotle to the formation of scholasticism. The direct and indirect influence of Aristotelian ideas can be traced during the long period of the formation of scholasticism. The emergence of non–Christian Aristotelianism – Averroism - was an important moment in the history of philosophy. An adherent of authentic Aristotelianism - Averroes, translated the works of Aristotle and interpreted them through the concepts of Arabic philosophy. The topic of the influence of authentic scholasticism on patristic theology is touched upon. The traditional understanding of scholasticism as a combination of Christian theology with the philosophy of Aristotle is noted. Scholasticism, being a religious philosophy, applies philosophical concepts and techniques to the Christian-church doctrine, the early experience of which is contained in patristics. Scholasticism, as a religious philosophy, needed the development of theological thought and its development took place along with the development of theology. Studying the great ancient thinkers – Plato and Aristotle, the development of scholasticism has moved forward especially noticeably, which is reflected in the formation of scholastic metaphysics. The penetration of Aristotelianism in the XIII century into Christian philosophy marked the heyday of scholasticism. The scholastics turned their eyes to the ancient thinkers in order to establish Christian truth. Aristotle was presented to them as a universal thinker with a broad outlook, who achieved knowledge by the aspirations of reason. The similarity of Aristotle's organic worldview and the Christian understanding of the spirit and life turned out to be suitable for representatives of scholasticism, who noticed the similarity of Aristotle's teaching about the existence of God with the teaching of Holy Scripture.

Mystical Emulations, Inverted Echoes

Mystical Emulations, Inverted Echoes

Cistercian Stories for Nuns and Monks: The Sacramental Imagination of Engelhard of Langheim

Cistercian Stories for Nuns and Monks: The Sacramental Imagination of Engelhard of Langheim

Представления о критериях Вселенского Собора в Византии в первой половине XV в. и концепция пентархии

This article examines the views of Byzantine theologians and church leaders of the 1st half of the 15th century on the criteria for an Ecumenical Council in connection with the controversy about the Union of Florence. The consideration also includes the ecclesiological tradition of the previous century, reflected in the documents of negotiations with Rome on church union and anti-Latin writings of Archbishop Nilus Cabasilas. It also briefly examines the results of Byzantine theological development, formulated in the first decades of Ottoman rule. The author shows that Orthodox theologians of the late Byzantine period, following a tradition dating back to the 1st millennium, did indeed recognize (contrary to popular beliefs) the existence of strict formal canonical criteria for the Ecumenical Council, which were defined in their eyes by the concept of the «Pentarchy» of the ancient Patriarchs: Council could be considered Ecumenical if it was recepted by representatives of the Churches of Rome, Constantinople, Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem. At the same time, other local Churches were assigned a secondary role. The significance of individual bishops was completely leveled out; the subject of church activity was the Patriarchy. This system of ecclesiological concepts by the 15th century already to some extent did not meet the requirements of reality; nevertheless, thanks to its collegial character, it gave the Orthodox Church the means to overcome the crisis caused by the Union of Florence. The rejection of those teachings of the Roman Church, in which it deviated from Orthodox dogma, on the part of the patriarchs of Alexandria, Antioch and Jerusalem, their rejection of the union (confirmed, among other things, conciliarly in Jerusalem in 1443) and the support of its opponents in the Patriarchate of Constantinople played in this process defining role. Due to this, the Council of Ferrara-Florence could not be considered Ecumenical from the point of view of the Byzantine tradition. At the same time, the development of ecclesiological thought in the 15th century. strengthened Orthodox theologians in the conviction that an Ecumenical Council was possible without the participation of Rome. The «Pentarchy» thus passed into the «Tetrarchy».

Using the Medicine of Grace: Kierkegaard Reads Hugh of Saint Victor on Sanctification

In this article, I argue that Søren Kierkegaard's prefatory editorial remark in Practice in Christianity about resorting to and making use of grace has a medieval inheritance, which stems from his reading of Hugh of St Victor (1096–1142). Rather than grounding Kierkegaard's remark exclusively within the Lutheran tradition, I suggest that the medieval inheritance of the relationship between operative and cooperative grace contributed to a theological development in Kierkegaard's view of sanctification. Moreover, Kierkegaard's journal entries prior to the publication of Practice in Christianity provide the connection to Hugh of St Victor's theology of sanctification. I briefly survey the development of Kierkegaard's view of grace and examine Kierkegaard's commentary on Hugh of St Victor's Seven Gifts of the Holy Spirit. Then, I survey Hugh's distinction between restorative and cooperative grace against the wider backdrop of his theology of sanctification to highlight a structural affinity with Kierkegaard's writings. My aim is to identify and illuminate this unexplored Catholic source of Kierkegaard's distinction between grace and works that indicates a non-competitive relationship between divine and human agency.

Theology in the Shadow of the Holocaust: Revisiting Bonhoeffer and the Jews

The scholarship on Dietrich Bonhoeffer and the Jews has focused on two questions: (1) To what extent did the persecution of the Jews drive Bonhoeffer's actions with respect to the Third Reich, and (2) Did Bonhoeffer's theology of Judaism and the Jewish people undergo a change as a result of the Nazi program of persecution and extermination? The work ranges from writers who reject the hagiography of a Bonhoeffer who for the sake of the Jews joined the resistance and paid the ultimate price, to those who argue that the persecution of the Jews was key in the development of Bonhoeffer's theology and his resistance to National Socialism. Bonhoeffer biographer Eberhard Bethge figured large in this second group; Bethge's work in this area coincided with his involvement in Christian post-Holocaust theology, an expression of the intensely philojudaic theology that emerged in the West following World War II. Driven by the desire to atone for millennia of anti-Jewish doctrine and action, post-Holocaust theology has exerted a strong influence on Bonhoeffer scholarship. The argument of this article is that the postwar focus on Christian anti-Judaism has led the church away from confronting the exceptionalism that persists in Christian identity and teaching. In its penitential zeal, the postwar project to renounce church anti-Judaism has instead replaced it with a Judeo-Christian triumphalism and a theological embrace of political Zionism that betray fundamental gospel principles. These run counter to the passionate opposition to the merger of hyper-nationalism and religion that informs Bonhoeffer's radical, humanistic Christology. Fashioning Bonhoeffer as a martyr for the Jews and as a forerunner of post-Holocaust theology does damage to the legacy of his theology and distorts the lessons of his life and witness. This carries implications for the role of the church in confronting the urgent issues of our time.

Reflections on Reflections

Abstract This essay responds to those of Darrell Bock, Craig Blomberg and Mark Strauss looking back on Howard Marshall’s Luke Historian and Theologian after over 50 years. It first highlights the impact of Marshall’s work on the growth in confidence among evangelicals in engaging in NT scholarship, the development of evangelical biblical theology, and (within that) a focus on the message of Luke-Acts. It then sketches four areas for future scholarship which Marshall’s work opens up: further work on the message of Acts; reflection on the place of Judaism and the Jewish people in Acts; fuller engagement with Luke’s theological contribution post-Conzelmann; and a broader and deeper understanding of salvation through a Lukan lens.

Theological Valorization of the Other from an Orthodox Christian Perspective: Dorin Oancea’s Model of Theology of Religions in Relation to Social and Theological Developments of Modernity

This paper analyzes the model of theology of religions elaborated by the Romanian Orthodox theologian Dorin Oancea and highlights the possibilities for openness towards other religious realms and for real theological validation of non-Christian religions. It focuses both on the modern premises of this model and on the ways in which the author ensures its continuity inside the Tradition and its acceptance within the Orthodox-Christian world. Dorin Oancea’s construct, a unique system of pluralistic inclusivism, elaborated by an Orthodox theologian who wants to remain aligned with the Eastern Orthodox patristic and traditional theological thinking while still addressing current topics by means of contemporary instruments and present-day language, is a valuable example of religious change that takes place within Orthodoxy, which is regarded as a traditional branch of Christianity. This paper identifies forms of theological newness in Dorin Oancea’s manner of addressing the challenges of present times in relation to the dynamics of the field of theology of religions and of Orthodox theology.

The Practice of Mission in Global Methodism: Emerging Trends from Everywhere to Everywhere

The study of Christian missions in the past centuries has focused on missions from the West to the rest of the world. This has been for a variety of reasons, including the significant presence of Western missionaries worldwide, the predominance of Western scholars, and the failure of those scholars to recognize the efforts of non-Western agencies. However, David W. Scott, Darryl W. Stephens, and seventeen other authors who are scholars, missionaries, and pastors challenge this Western-centric and limited view of Christian mission. Rather than focusing exclusively on the mission of Western churches, this collection of articles offers indigenous and global perspectives in understanding twenty-first-century Methodist mission, with the recognition that the Methodist missionaries today are sent from ‘from everywhere to everywhere’.Part 1, ‘Cultivating Global Relationships’, focuses on the challenges that the Methodist mission faces. The authors think carefully about theological development, the decolonization of missiological thinking, and the economics of international mission, and call for transformation and rethinking in intercultural theology, partnership, and finance for twenty-first-century Methodist mission. Parts 2 and 3 explore forms, patterns, ideas, and agencies that became a critical part of twenty-first-century Methodist mission. In part 2, ‘Practicing Contextual Engagement’, eight authors interrogate different forms and understandings of missions led by non-Western agencies in and from different contexts and regions, including Oceania, Asia, Africa, and Latin America. Post-colonial thinking and its engagement with Methodist theology helped authors to decolonize theology, reclaim traditional culture, and differentiate their understanding of mission from the West. The authors introduce ecological mission in Fiji, the role of women in Korea and Latin America, holistic mission and the importance of education in Africa, and diaspora mission as distinct forms, theologies, and practices of Methodist mission today.Part 3, ‘Educating for Missional Formation’, discusses how Methodists should engage with education and Wesleyan tradition. It argues that Methodist mission should be holistic, encompassing the understanding of mission as partnership, evangelism, and service and outreach, aim for reconciliation with all creatures through zero-emission mission, continue to empower women through education, and build a good relationship with Muslims and converts as a way of revealing God’s holiness.The last part of the volume, ‘Discerning the Future of Mission Together’, offers suggestions for twenty-first-century Methodist mission such as peacemaking work, solidarity in suffering, recognizing the importance of lay-led and young people’s initiatives, and careful attention to inequities within global Methodist churches and changing relationships between churches in the global South and the global North.This edited volume is an insightful and helpful work for the study of Christian mission, world Christianity, and Methodism. Several scholarly works over the past decades have successfully demonstrated the shift of the centre of Christian presence from the global North to the global South. However, the changing atmosphere in Christian missions has not been widely recognized despite the growth of non-Western missionary populations from countries in the global South. This book pays needed attention to the diversified patterns of mission escaping from normative forms of mission introduced by the West. Also, it does not stop at introducing the role of theologies, practices, and churches of the global South in Methodist mission, but offers a space to think about the future of twenty-first-century Methodist mission.On the other hand, the book would have benefited from showing how Western Methodism and its mission connect and engage with theologies, practices, and agencies in and from the global South. Where should we locate Western Methodist mission in global Methodism? How should the West engage with twenty-first-century global Methodist mission? A certain level of engagement with the West in exploring the development of Methodist missiology may have added value to their discussion here, since Methodism in the West is also a part of global Methodism.This book, which discusses theologies and practices of mission in global Methodism, contributes significantly to the scholarship on Christian mission, world Christianity, and Methodism. This collection of nineteen articles highlights successfully the changing patterns and practices of mission in global Methodism. I recommend it to scholars and students studying Christian mission, world Christianity, and Wesleyan and Methodist traditions. It would also benefit missionaries and all Methodists interested in learning more about twenty-first-century Methodist mission.

Theology and the Wesleyan Tradition

ABSTRACT This article examines the nature of systematic or dogmatic theology in relation to the Wesleyan tradition. A brief review of contemporary works examining the theology of John Wesley is followed by a survey of the development of systematic theology within the Wesleyan tradition in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. An examination of the Trinitarian, credal shape of Christian theology leads to thinking about the shape of the theological curriculum in the Christian college or seminary and finally to reflections on the role of theology in the church.

Die ontwikkeling van ars in die teologies filosofiese werke van Ramon Llull (ca.1232–1316)

The development of ars in the theological-philosophical works of Ramon Llull (ca.1232–1316). By synthesising the most recent specialist research, notably that of Anthony Bonner and Mark D. Johnston, this article provides an accessible overview of the development of the ‘great universal art’ or ars in Ramon Llull’s (ca.1232–1316) theological-philosophical output, as presented in his works Libere de contemplació en Déu, Ars compendiosa inveniendi veritatem, Ars inventiva veritatis, Tabula generalis, Ars demonstrativa and Ars generalis ultima. It is shown that Llull’s ars was an eccentric yet coherent attempt to provide an alternative to both the Aristotelian scholastic-conceptual framework and its radicalised versions in Averroism during the second half of the 13th century. By insisting on religious tolerance as its premise, Llull embedded this alternative squarely within the monotheistic missionary context of the same period. Without neglecting the discursive magnitude of his ars, this rather ‘nonmedieval’ tolerance stands as Llull’s greatest gift to the central Middle Ages and its subsequent idea-historical development in both theology and philosophy.Intradisciplinary and/or interdisciplinary implications: As a millennium-long discourse, Medieval philosophy functions in a Venn diagrammatic relationship with Medieval history, church history, patristics, philosophy of religion, and in this case, missiology. Whenever mainstream or ‘canonised’ Medieval philosophy is being impacted by specialist research, it may well have noteworthy implications for these related disciplines. Such is the case in this critical reappraisal of theological-philosophical aspects in the central Medieval ars of Ramon Llull.