Late Theology Research Articles

Spiritual resonance

This article presents a pneumatological reading of Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s appeal to the phenomenon of musical resonance through his use of the metaphor of “polyphony” and related musical casts of mind. In so doing, it provides an alternative reading of Bonhoeffer’s late theology by establishing a connection between Letters and Papers from Prison and Ethics through his use of musical metaphors. In it I make two significant claims about Bonhoeffer’s use of musical metaphors in his late theology. First, that polyphony is a dynamic metaphor which Bonhoeffer discovers and utilises to express his understanding of the relationship between God and the world in Christ. I argue that the limitations of visual-spatial metaphors, which Bonhoeffer openly laments in Ethics, are overcome by his discovery of polyphony in Letters and Papers from Prison as a metaphor which conceptualises the relationship between God and the world (operating in a single realm or space) as well as preserving the distinction of each; in this respect, polyphony texturizes Bonhoeffer’s view of reality, carefully nuancing it. The way the metaphor functions for Bonhoeffer mirrors the way he employs the work of the Holy Spirit in his theology. Thus, it indicates that implicit in Bonhoeffer’s theological appeal to polyphony is a model of the agency of the Holy Spirit, so that in exploring polyphony a latent pneumatology in Bonhoeffer can be unearthed. Read in this way, polyphony is a potent metaphor for illumining the Spirit’s work as that which enables unity, distinction, and dynamic relationality between God and the world in the church. The article concludes by pointing to how a musico-pneumatology such as that which we find in Bonhoeffer can be further developed.

Book Review: Eleanor McLaughlin, Unconscious Christianity in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Late Theology: Encounters with the Unknown Christ

Book Review: Eleanor McLaughlin, <i>Unconscious Christianity in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Late Theology: Encounters with the Unknown Christ</i>

Unconscious Christianity in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Late Theology: Encounters with the Unknown Christ. By Eleanor McLaughlin. Foreword by Rowan Williams

Unconscious Christianity in Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s Late Theology: Encounters with the Unknown Christ. By Eleanor McLaughlin. Foreword by Rowan Williams

EleanorMcLaughlin, Unconscious Christianity in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Late Theology: Encounters with the Unknown Christ. London: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2020, 210 pp. $95.00/£73.00

EleanorMcLaughlin, Unconscious Christianity in Dietrich Bonhoeffer's Late Theology: Encounters with the Unknown Christ. London: Lexington Books/Fortress Academic, 2020, 210 pp. $95.00/£73.00

The Theological Foundation of Hobbesian Physics: A Defence of Corporeal God

In 1668, the octogenarian Hobbes finally affirmed openly a doctrine that was unavoidable given his longstanding embrace of both theism and materialism: God is corporeal. However, this doctrine has generally been downplayed or dismissed by scholars, who have alleged that Hobbes's corporeal theism is irreconcilable with his more orthodox theological pronouncements or with his fundamental metaphysical principles. This paper defends the coherence of Hobbes's corporeal God against particularly vigorous criticisms of Douglas Jesseph and others. The aim of the paper is not, however, to situate Hobbes's deity safely within the boundaries of seventeenth century protestant theology, as defenders of Hobbesian theism have often wanted to do. Rather, the paper places the corporeal God at the metaphysical foundations of Hobbes's natural philosophy. Despite his early reticence about theological speculation, Hobbes eventually relied on God to provide a continuous, resistance-free source of motion or conatus to a material plenum whose parts would otherwise quickly slow to an infinitesimal crawl. Hobbes's late theology, while certainly heterodox in content, is not so different in function from that of contemporaries like René Descartes and Henry More, whose religious sincerity is rarely questioned. Hobbes' corporeal deity deserves a place in the seventeenth century pantheon.

A Comparative Study of the Relationship between Religion and Culture in Paul Tillich’s Early and Late Theology of Culture

A Comparative Study of the Relationship between Religion and Culture in Paul Tillich’s Early and Late Theology of Culture

Rethinking Augustine's Early Theology: An Argument for Continuity. By CAROL HARRISON. Pp. xiii + 302. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. ISBN 0 19 928166 1. 55.

AfterBeauty and Revelation in the Thought of Saint Augustine (1992) and Christian Truth and Fractured Humanity: Augustine in Context (2000) this is Carol Harrison's third book on Augustine's thought. In it Harrison concentrates on Augustine's early works and puts forward ‘an argument for continuity’ between Augustine's early and late theology. She does so against a tendency in scholarship to separate an early from a late Augustine, the former still Neoplatonist in character, the latter more biblical and orthodox. Ironically, this tendency arose as scholars critically examined the various accounts of Augustine's conversion, comparing the Confessions with the early works. Rather than restoring the latter to Augustine's oeuvre as a whole this process resulted in their yet wider separation from it and in a tendency to push back the conversion to 396/7. For Harrison, in contrast, everything that makes Augustine a fully orthodox Christian theologian can already be found in the early works. It has been argued that Augustine's thought became only gradually Christian (and Augustinian) during the 390s. There is talk of a ‘revolution of the 390s’, or, more specifically, of 396/7, the year Augustine wrote Ad Simplicianum 1.2, where he first formulated his teachings on predestination, a process of which he himself wrote in Retractationes 2.1.1 (CCSL 57, pp. 89–90): laboratum est quidem pro libero arbitrio voluntatis humanae, sed vicit dei gratia (which Harrison, p. 17, n. 28, cites as sed vincit gratia Dei). Harrison in contrast speaks of a ‘revolution of 386’, arguing that everything that current scholarship tends to pack into 396 and the changes linked to Ad Simplicianum 1.2 belongs to the earlier year.