Graham Ward Research Articles

Book Review: Another Kind of Normal: Ethical Life II by Graham Ward

Book Review: <i>Another Kind of Normal: Ethical Life II</i> by Graham Ward

Joseph Ratzinger and the Healing of the Reformation-Era Divisions ed. by Emery de Gaál and Matthew Levering

Reviewed by: Joseph Ratzinger and the Healing of the Reformation-Era Divisions ed. by Emery de Gaál and Matthew Levering Emil Anton Joseph Ratzinger and the Healing of the Reformation-Era Divisions, edited by Emery de Gaál and Matthew Levering (Steubenville, Ohio: Emmaus Academic, 2019), xxvii+371 pp. When George Smith first deciphered the Mesopotamian account of the Flood and realized he was the first person to read it in a couple thousand years, he started running around the room in excitement and taking his clothes off. Without the undressing part, I experienced the same impulse while reading Joseph Ratzinger and the Healing of the Reformation-Era Divisions, a collection of seventeen priceless chapters by both Catholic and Protestant scholars, coming out of a conference held in 2017 to celebrate Joseph Ratzinger’s ninetieth birthday and to commemorate the five-hundred-year anniversary of the Reformation. This wonderful book takes its place as clearly the leading volume on Ratzinger and Catholic– Protestant ecumenism. Based on his media image, recently reinforced by the Netflix movie [End Page 675] The Two Popes, one would not think that Joseph Ratzinger / Benedict XVI would prove a relevant figure in overcoming the centuries-old Catholic–Protestant divide. All one remembers about Benedict XVI and ecumenism, based on news coverage, is that he said Protestant churches are not really churches. Fortunately, the scholars contributing to the present volume dig deeper, look behind the scenes, and uncover Ratzinger/Benedict’s “history-changing contributions” (22), such as saving the Catholic–Lutheran Joint Declaration on the Doctrine of Justification and making “The Thames flow into the Tiber.” (Talk about an ingenious chapter title!) In order, the topics covered in this volume include papal primacy, principles of ecumenism, exegesis and liturgy, secularism, Mariology, public theology, Christology, Luther, love, Eucharist, creation, conscience, missiology, justification, Radical Orthodoxy (John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock, Graham Ward, et al.), and the relationship between Scripture, Tradition, and Church. Space does not permit me to review all of the articles; instead, I will highlight only some points that I found particularly illuminating. As editor, Matthew Levering opens the introductory chapter with a comparison of Karl Rahner’s and Joseph Ratzinger’s views on attaining Christian unity. Rahner presents what Thomas A. Baima calls “a Pelagian view of ecumenism” (23), a rash manmade institutional unification which might be a marvel of pragmatic skill but could not account for its structures in terms of God’s instituting Word (xix). Ratzinger’s model is more theological and patient: respecting our differences, accepting the good reasons both sides have for them, and thus learning from each other, “will in the end deepen our unity and, in God’s time, will allow for the ‘must’ of division to give way to a doctrinally articulated unity-in-diversity” (xxi). But what should this unity-in-diversity look like? In his article on the principles of ecumenism, Baima makes a helpful distinction between the Church’s structure and its institution. For example, in communist Ukraine there was no Catholic ecclesial institution, but the sacramental and apostolic structure of the Church remained. The two terms are often confused; distinguishing between them helps to clarify that the goal of Christian unity is not necessarily a common institution, but it does include a common sacramental structure. Baima also notes that Ratzinger rejected “the return model used by the Council of Florence” when he famously said that “Rome must not require more of the East with respect to the doctrine of primacy than had been formulated and was lived in the first millennium” (28). Baima raises the very pertinent question as to how this might “inform dialogue with the communities of the Reformation” (29). Would it not [End Page 676] mean, for example, that Rome should not demand that Protestants accept the dogmatic definitions of 1854, 1870, and 1950 as such, but simply admit that they are not heretical doctrinal developments? (The next question would be whether Catholics could also legitimately think so.) The question is very much connected to the relationship between Scripture and the Church, treated by Douglas A. Sweeney in his important contribution. While acknowledging rapprochement between Evangelicals who are “sinking...

Decolonizing Theological Education: Learning from Latinx, Womanist, and Asian Voices for Transformative PedagogyAtando Cabos: Latinx Contributions to Theological Education, ElizabethConde‐Frazier, Eerdmans, 2021 (ISBN 978‐0‐8028‐7901‐1), vii + 151 pp., pb $19.99Notes of a Native Daughter: Testifying in Theological Education, KeriDay, Eerdmans, 2021 (ISBN 978‐0‐8028‐7882‐3), viii + 144 pp., pb $19.99Attempt Great Things for God: Theological Education in Diaspora, Chloe T.Sun, Eerdmans,

AbstractTheological education—and society more broadly—stands critically ‘between the times’. Contemporary theological education exists between traditional modes of formation implicitly shaped by western colonialism and an uncertain future occasioned by seismic shifts around funding, admissions, ecologies of formation, and globalization. This ‘between the times’ moment both threatens the survival of theological education institutes and also unveils the historic and ongoing complicity of theological education in the wider racist colonial legacies of white privilege and hegemony. The same ‘in between’ moment also proffers to theological education the possibility to embrace diverse voices and transformative pedagogies within theological education as part of decolonization and decolonizing the curriculum. Embracing decolonizing theology will both save the soul of theological education and may help it survive through embracing collaborative, creative, and intersectional models of education that meet pragmatic needs as well as moral imperatives. This article explores three publications by Elizabeth Conde‐Frazier, Keri Day, and Chloe Sun that offer Latinx, womanist, and Asian theological perspectives on decolonizing theology in this ‘between the times’ moment of theological education. Setting out first the ecclesial and then the wider political contexts of these three works, the article examines how they imagine new decolonized possibilities for theological education. Following Graham Ward, the article develops how all three authors in their own ways argue that decolonizing theology and theological education entails ‘provincializing’ the (white) western context as normative, ‘translating’ or ‘transplanting’ theology back into culturally authentic discourses that contend meaning and deconstruct white power, and positively ‘affirming’ the varied cultural identities in which theological meaning is located.

Body and Soul: Queer Possessions in the Black Atlantic

Body and Soul: Queer Possessions in the Black Atlantic

The Logic of Secular Sense in Cendrars’ Epic Trilogy

Abstract Engaging with Graham Ward’s contention that literature can never be entirely secular, I argue that some pieces of literature can, in fact, tell us a great deal about the conceptual logic of the secular. I turn, in particular, to three poems by Blaise Cendrars—Les Pâques à New York, Prose du Transsibérien et de la petite Jeanne de France, and Le Panama ou les aventures de mes sept oncles, written during the years of 1912 and 1914, so as to reconstruct the ways in which the poems themselves are entangled in a dispute over the very possibility of a purified secular plane. That is, Cendrars’ trilogy dramatises both the attempt to write secularly and the difficulty—even impossibility—of accomplishing precisely that task. Hence, I offer a reading of the journey traversed in Cendrars’ early trilogy that focuses on the desacralising movement at work in this journey, as well as the various resistances such movement encounters. On the one hand, the three poems tend towards a becoming-secular of poetry: the Christian regime of sense in Pâques is quickly replaced by a series of ‘any-spaces-whatsoever’ where secular figures are perpetually produced. On the other hand, this secular hero-narrative ends in tragedy, such that the poetic text ends up being figured as a utopia, an impossible space that offers compensation for the impossibility of performing secularity in life.

A Sense of Presence: Mediating an American Apocalypse

Here I build upon Robert Orsi’s work by arguing that we can see presence—and the longing for it—at work beyond the obvious spaces of religious practice. Presence, I propose, is alive and well in mediated apocalypticism, in the intense imagination of the future that preoccupies those who consume its narratives in film, games, and role plays. Presence is a way of bringing worlds beyond into tangible form, of touching them and letting them touch you. It is, in this sense, that Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward observe the “re-emergence” of religion with a “new visibility” that is much more than “simple re-emergence of something that has been in decline in the past but is now manifesting itself once more.” I propose that the “new awareness of religion” they posit includes the mediated worlds that enchant and empower us via deeply immersive fandoms. Whereas religious institutions today may be suspicious of presence, it lives on in the thick of media fandoms and their material manifestations, especially those forms that make ultimate promises about the world to come.

Vulner-ability: A Systematic Theological Approach to an Ambivalent Term

Abstract The term vulnerability is en vogue, both in theology and in mission studies. This contribution systematically analyses the concept and phenomenon of vulnerability and discusses its different aspects; namely materiality and embodiment, pain and suffering, and resilience and resistance. From a Christian theological point of view, these aspects of vulnerability resonate with key theological questions that lead to a closer look at the Christologies of Jürgen Moltmann, Jon Sobrino, and Graham Ward. The guiding questions are: How can we speak about the vulnerable human being in his or her relationship to Jesus Christ, the Son of God made flesh? And how is it possible vice versa to speak about the incarnated God in light of the vulnerability of all human beings? Finally, the argument culminates in a plea for a vulnerable theology in a wounded world.

An ‘engaged’ systematic theology? Insights from the ressourcement movement and contemporary systematic theologian Graham Ward

This article explores the question of what the scope and focus of theology should be, by considering two closely connected suggestions in this regard. The first suggestion comes from a group of theologians from the mid-twentieth century who played an important role in instigating the ressourcement movement. These theologians, it is shown, aimed at moving beyond the dualisms of Neo-Scholasticism, by turning anew to the theological style and method of the earliest Christian thinkers. The second related suggestion comes from the contemporary systematic theologian, Graham Ward, a scholar who draws on the thought of the ressourcement theologians in his development of what he calls a “culturally engaged” or simply “engaged” systematic theology. After examining the contributions of both the ressourcement theologians and Graham Ward, the article asks how these insights could inform the way we approach and do theology in our own context.

On Prayer in Anglican Systematic Theology

AbstractFor an ecclesial tradition that does not have a particularly strong history of systematic theology, it is curious that several of those currently engaged in the production of large‐scale, multi‐volume projects of systematic theology are Anglican theologians. In this article, I investigate three such projects: Sarah Coakley’s God, Sexuality and the Self: An Essay ‘On the Trinity’, Graham Ward’s How the Light Gets In: Ethical Life I, and Katherine Sonderegger’s Systematic Theology – Vol. 1: The Doctrine of God. In the first section, I examine these examples of systematic theology in light of Stephen Sykes’s analysis of the state of the discipline in Anglican theology. Then, in the second section, I identify a common characteristic shared by Coakley, Ward, and Sonderegger: the grounding of systematic theology in the practice of prayer. I argue that although these contemporary systematicians might not see themselves as enunciating an Anglican systematics, the systematic seriousness they accord to matters of prayer can be interpreted as articulations of the Anglican propensity to grant theological priority to the liturgy. In the final section, I suggest that for all the theological opportunities made available by the systematic reclamation of prayer, these invariably positive embraces of prayer leave little space for what might be called the Schattenseite of prayer. There is a ‘shadow‐side’ to the history and practice of prayer that I argue needs to be appropriately theorized if the category of prayer is to have a future in the discipline of systematic theology.

Graham Ward, Unimaginable: What We Imagine and What We Can’t

Graham Ward, <i>Unimaginable: What We Imagine and What We Can’t</i>

Spiritual care as a secular profession: politics, theory, and practice

ABSTRACTSpiritual care is a greatly misunderstood profession, both conceptually and practically. This misunderstanding was most recently demonstrated in the decision in the Canadian province of Saskatchewan to eliminate all public funds to spiritual care in public healthcare on the grounds of state impartiality with regard to religion. In contrast, this article argues that spiritual care is a secular practice which utilizes religious forms of knowledge to assist the aims of secular state-funded healthcare. Drawing upon such theorists as Jürgen Habermas, Charles Taylor, Paul Ricoeur, and Graham Ward, the article demonstrates that spirituality is the concept employed by secular healthcare to make sense of religious and metaphysical phenomena. As a healthcare profession uniquely suited to address religious and metaphysical concerns using the concept ‘spirituality’, spiritual care practitioners are thus shown to be an integral part of the secular healthcare team.

From Tomb to Text: The Body of Christ in the Book of John by Christina Petterson

Reviewed by: From Tomb to Text: The Body of Christ in the Book of John by Christina Petterson Elritia le Roux Petterson, Christina. 2016. From Tomb to Text: The Body of Christ in the Book of John. London: Bloomsbury T&T Clark. Hardback. ISBN 978-0567670557. Pp. 155. $39.95. Christina Petterson offers a revolutionary reading of the Gospel of John, especially with regard to John 1:14 and 6:51. She puts a completely new perspective on the table regarding how the concept of σάρξ ("flesh") should be viewed and how this shapes the total perspective of the Gospel on flesh and body. Petterson deconstructs the generally accepted idea that the Gospel of John highlights and appreciates the humanness of Jesus Christ on the grounds of John 1:14. The doctrine of the two natures of Christ found solid support and substantiation from this introductory verse, which was [End Page 501] believed, since it formed part of the prologue, to outline the author's perspective that Jesus was the fleshly manifestation of God among us. Petterson challenges this view by arguing that "becoming flesh" is rather a spiritual experience that takes place within the believer as the message of the gospel becomes internalised. The phrase ἐν ἡμῖν ("in us") in John 1:14 is indicative of how the gospel becomes part of humans who respond to it and produce texts as a result of this. In the words of Petterson, "[t]he gospel creates matter from the realm of the spiritual." Petterson finds support for this idea in the work of Stephen D. Moore, God's Gym: Divine Male Bodies of the Bible (London: Routledge, 1996), arguing that the gospel materialised the belief in an empty tomb and a risen Christ in the composition of the Gospel of John. The extension of the gospel beyond the tomb is the written Gospel, and so the book becomes Jesus's risen body. Writing makes ideas present. The confessing church, those who testify to the risen Christ, replaced the body by becoming the body. In the discourses of the early church, the presence of Jesus Christ is mediated. This is how the Word becomes flesh. For this process to be consummated, language is essential. Language becomes the means through which the ecclesial corpus, born from the crucified and risen Christ, replaces the body of Christ. Petterson draws on Graham Ward (1999, 163–181), "Bodies: The Displaced Body of Jesus Christ" in Radical Orthodoxy: A New Theology, edited by John Milbank, Catherine Pickstock and Graham Ward (London: Routledge), arguing that the mediation of narration and stories is the literal Word of God that "supplements the incarnate Word of God." Petterson sets out to prove that the text of the Gospel of John functions as a pleromatic presence by "shedding the body." By "pleromatic presence" she means the "absolute presence of the divine," which not only crystallises in the presence of Christ, but is extended to include the text. I find Petterson's argument provocative and extremely exciting, and I am of the opinion that it is worthy of our attention, especially the insight that John 1:14 demands a revisit. Her insights into the functioning of language and its persuading power are valuable. It liberates the text from being reduced to a historical account of Jesus's life, for it rediscovers the existential value and meaning of the gospel within the very existence of the believer. It also re-evaluates the inherent power and influence of the church to continue practising the ideals of the gospel through continuous discourse and creative use of language. In my opinion, it re-affirms the [End Page 502] importance of the preaching of the gospel, both within and outside the church, as well as the emancipation of ordinary believers to become agents of inspiration. To my mind, Petterson offers a brave and controversial but extremely valuable contribution to NT studies, especially with regard to the Gospel of John, which should be considered by all scholars and exegetes of the NT. Elritia le Roux North-West University propeleroux@gmail.com Copyright © 2018 The New Testament Society of Southern Africa (NTSSA)

Why faith makes sense: On Graham Ward’s Unbelievable

Ward’s recent volume on the entwining of belief and perception, while not being an explicitly theological monograph, nonetheless evinces a subtle texture that displays his continuing fidelity to certain aspects of Radical Orthodoxy’s vision. (Ward, Graham 2013. Unbelievable: Why We Believe and Why We Don’t. London and New York: I. B. Tauris; ISBN: 971780767352) This can be seen in its interdisciplinary focus and its rejection of dualistic philosophies (including the supposed divisions between the sacred and the secular, nature and grace, transcendence and immanence, visibility and invisibility). He argues for the ultimate ‘fittingness’ between mind and world, thereby rejecting any representationalist account of this relation. Viewing the practices of belief within a re-telling of evolutionary history and phenomenological accounts of perception, Ward seeks to show the pervasiveness of dispositional beliefs within all worldly interactions. Consequentially, ‘belief’ cannot therefore be relegated to an epiphenomenal or lesser form of knowing, since all seeing is a seeing-as, with the result being that it is imbued with the valences of affect and valuation. Religious faith then is simply a deepening of the logic that is already present within ordinary modes of finite engagement, and therefore should not be seen as an ‘unnatural’ intervention within the realm of human culture. Overall then, this work can be summarized as an apologetic for the rationality of belief in our ‘secularized’ societies, and furthermore, for the constitutive role of belief and faith for sensibility as such.

“I believe…”: A qualitative study of older adults

ABSTRACTBeliefs. Believing. Both are tested by different life experiences. This qualitative study of 15 older adults used a grounded theology methodology to develop a model of what influences the views of a range of Christian and agnostic subjects. The study identified two sources in life learning and spiritual learning that influence agnostic, more liberal, or conservative beliefs. This emergent model is contrasted with the approach of leading theologian Graham Ward.

Radical Orthodoxy - Panel discussion between Profs Graham Ward, John Milbank, Danie Goosen and Dr Jaco Kruger

Radical Orthodoxy - Panel discussion between Profs Graham Ward, John Milbank, Danie Goosen and Dr Jaco Kruger

Book Review: Unbelievable: Why We Believe and Why We Don't

Unbelievable: Why We Believe and Why We Don't. By Graham Ward. London: I. B. Tauris Publishers, 2014. x + 246 pp. $32.00 (cloth).In 1787 the German philosopher Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi wrote one of the very first responses to Kant's Critique of Pure Reason. Jacobi argued that Kant, in his attempt to save the concept of reason, had only further condemned it. Through reason, the Enlightenment had sought a purer, objective way to understand reality, free from history or prejudice. The problem with such a program was that all knowledge, including reason, was fundamentally contextual. For Jacobi, the only way to be at peace with our knowledge was to realize that everything we know is essentially a matter of belief. According to Jacobi, no philosophy, not even Kant's, could escape this contextual nature, and it was, accordingly, time that we gave up wanting to invent spectacles that enable us to see without eyes.In his new book, Unbelievable: Why We Believe and Why We Don't, Graham Ward takes up a topic that is as germane to our own age as it was to Jacobi's. We, too, are presently questioning the way we structure concepts such as belief and reason, and wondering whether in our narrow search for certainty we have left too much out. How has our lack of faith in belief undermined our ability to believe in anything?One of Unbelievable's most important projects is to take up the dualism between fact and belief. Ward points out how we require a more complex approach to this problem. Facts do not simply manifest themselves; rather, they arise out of a process of abstraction guided by human interest. These processes by which we come to know the world are first emotional and relational before they are 'rational' (p. 55). The failure to recognize this has meant that belief has come to be associated with opinion and desire, establishing a narrow definition of knowing that ignores belief s fundamental role in human knowledge.Ward maintains that we all engage in belief. Belief is not, as many progress narratives would lead us to understand, something that can be outgrown. It is not a hangover from a simpler, more ignorant time. Rather, as Ward puts it, believing is an anthropological condition (p. 14). In order to demonstrate how we are believers to the core, Ward marshals a range of materials to offer an archeology of belief. From the emergence of the species, we have accommodated ourselves to the material world through belief. Through images, symbols, and rituals, humans have constructed the world which they inhabit through various imagined continuities and connections. …

Carl Schmitt,Dictatorship. From the Origin of the Modern Concept of Sovereignty to the Proletarian Class Struggle, translated by Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014, 314 pp, pb £17.99.

Carl Schmitt,<b>Dictatorship. From the Origin of the Modern Concept of Sovereignty to the Proletarian Class Struggle</b>, translated by Michael Hoelzl and Graham Ward, Cambridge: Polity Press, 2014, 314 pp, pb £17.99.

Editor's Note

Welcome to what I hope will be a relaxing and productive summer for all of us. It’s been exciting to see new submissions coming into JAAR across a broad sweep of themes and topics! Keep those submissions coming in: JAAR publishes in all areas of interest to scholars of religion. For instructions on submitting to JAAR , go to our homepage, jaar.oxfordjournals.org. While you’re there, be sure to sign up for email alerts so you will know what’s coming up in each issue of JAAR and when new content has been added to advance access. This is a free service for AAR members. In this issue of JAAR , we hear from AAR’s recent President, Thomas Tweed, who has thought long and hard about the ongoing balancing act between theology and religious studies in the American academy. He put those thoughts together in his presidential address, delivered in Atlanta last November, and in the creative programming he mounted for the 2015 AAR meeting. This included a plenary session comprised of a dialogue between Ann Taves and Graham Ward (representing “religious studies” and “theology,” respectively), which can be found in Religious Studies News (rsn.aarweb.org). While you’re at RSN ’s homepage, take advantage of the opportunity to subscribe, so you’ll never miss new articles on topics of interest to students, professors, administrators … anyone who wants to keep an eye on religion in public life and in the academy.

Theocracy, Eschatology, and the Ephemeral Church: Graham Ward and the “Crisis of Democracy”

This article offers a critical assessment of Graham Ward’s political theology and critique of modern democracy. Ward argues that modern democracy expresses a nihilistic metaphysics and lacks an adequate account of the embodiment of sovereignty within the social, with the result that it tacitly harbors totalitarianism. As an alternative, Ward advances a theocratic model of the social, with the aim of providing an account of the social embodiment of sovereignty lacking in democracy. The article argues that Ward is ultimately unsuccessful in this attempt. His eschatological focus separates the church from the world, undermining his account of the embodiment of sovereignty and reinforcing the very emptiness at the heart of the social his theology is intended to counter.

Theological -philosophical perceptions of the key parts of the movie The Pervert's Guide to ideology

In this work we tend to give a theological reflection on the key parts of the movie The Pervert's Guide to Ideology. Through his views on Christianity by Passions of Christ, Žižek favours a radical break out with the Old Testament's anxious perception of God, which is dismissed by post metaphysical religion - a Christianity that concentrates on agape. On the other side, Kolakovski elevates the principle of loyalty in suffering and tends to emphasize that faith is in fact irrational. According to Kolakovski, God accomplishes his triumph showing himself different that he is. Žižek points that religious fanaticism begins as religious suspension of the ethical. Rowen Williams, on the other side, thinks that without God we easily adopt pervert freedom, which presents the essence of the diabolical. According to Žižek, modern capitalism has a sort of religious structure, which is powered by absolute demand: capital must circulate, multiply and progress. Graham Ward concentrates on the vision of a postmodern city that represents a place in which all desires are concentrated and may be realized. In fact, such a cosmopolitan city is no more a place in which to find heavenly direction, but a city without the church.