Theological Project Research Articles

Black theology in dialogue with LGBTQ+ persons in the Black Church: walking in the shoes of James Hal Cone and Katie Geneva Cannon

ABSTRACT The contributions of theologians like James Hal Cone and Katie Geneva Canon to the broader theological project of Black liberational theology allows for a rich discourse on what it means to be Black in the world, In doing this, memories of trauma must be engaged head on in ways that they become anamnetic moments for reimagining a new way of being human that is inclusive of all persons, Consequently, this work argues for the reimagination of the Black Church and its theologies that speak to Black experiences in ways that do not reinstate the hegemonic power of Whiteness as a mode of being in the world. Furthermore, the content and hermeneutic spaces shaping Black theology is critiqued with the intent to create a healthy space for the experiences of Black members of the LGBTQ+ community.

The Converging of the Ways?—What Sabbath Practice Can Teach Us about Jewish-Christian and Intra-Religious Relations Today

Given the tenuous relationship Christians have had with Jews over the centuries, not to mention division among Christianity on points of doctrine and practice, a contemporary examination of the Sabbath could be an opportunity to bring Jews and Christians into further dialogue with each other, not on the basis of a shared written text, but rather the living texts of religious experience. However, a review of the literature reveals a scarcity of empirical research on the Sabbath, especially how religious professionals practice Sabbath as exemplars in their spheres of influence. In this study, I, therefore, offer a comparative description of my findings with respect to two practical theological studies I conducted on Shabbat/Sabbath practice, one with American pulpit rabbis and the other Seventh-day Adventist pastors. As a practical theological project, I offer a theological reflection of the data, followed by implications for theological (re)construction and revised praxis for the Church and Jewish-Christian relations.

Теология в постсекулярном контексте: истоки, проблемы и перспективы

The article reconstructs the cultural conditions of the possibility of theology as a specific intellectual practice. The author proceeds from the understanding of the divine as non-anthropic, that is, beyond the control of man, but at the same time exerting an irresistible influence on him. In this context, the divine appears as unintelligible, which casts doubt on the project of theology as a form of cognition of the divine. However, despite this, in the ancient Greek Poleis, the divine becomes the subject of theology as a contemplative practice; it is the contemplative attitude to the deity that allows making the divine an object of cognition. A contemplative attitude to the divine has accompanied theology throughout its history. However, it is supplemented by a practical (liturgical) attitude. The secularization of Western European culture led to the separation of theology from religious practice. In modern times, there is a specific form of theology (crypto-theology) that allows thinking about the divine and its attributes, regardless of the experience of communion with God. Besides, extra-institutional theology is being formed, free from dogmatic restrictions and even a kind of amateurish theology, whose representatives did not have special, "school" training. All these transformations eventually led to the crisis of theology and the decline of its influence. At the same time, at the beginning of the XIX century, there were conditions for the emergence of a "modern theology" that responds to the challenges of secularism. In the second half of the twentieth century, the topic and problems of modern theology were also influenced by the programs of "overcoming metaphysics" (M. Heidegger) and "deconstruction" (J. Derrida). Modern theology basically positions itself as post-metaphysical and generates more or less radical projects of phenomenological theology (J.-L. Marion, J. Manoussakis) and negative theology (J. Derrida).

Ontology and Anti-Platonism: Reconsidering Colin Gunton’s Trinitarian Theology

Summary This article offers a reading of Colin Gunton’s trinitarian theology in light of recent theological attempts to develop accounts of ‘new trinitarian ontologies’ in a strongly Christian Neo-Platonic vein. In particular, this article seeks to situate Gunton’s work within the broader context of late twentieth-century European thought by comparing his ‘trinitarian ontology’ to the anti-Platonic ontologies of Martin Heidegger and Gilles Deleuze. By way of considering the ‘anti-Platonic’ aspects of Gunton’s trinitarian theology, this article presents his theological project as a testcase which highlights the stakes in constructing ‘new’ trinitarian ontologies as well as possible objections to the affirmative attitude towards Christian Neo-Platonism in contemporary theological metaphysics.

Beyond the Avicennian Turn: The Creeds of Muḥammad b. Yūsuf al-Sanūsī (d. 895/1490)

Abstract Even as a new historiographical narrative has emerged regarding post-Ġazālian kalām, one that forgoes assumptions of stagnation and posits instead a dynamic fusion with Avicennian philosophy, most studies so far have focused on the scholarly output of Persia and the broader Islamic East. This article aims to complement and complicate that research by analyzing the creedal writings of a major figure in the later theological history of the Islamic West, Muḥammad b. Yūsuf al-Sanūsī (d. 895/1490). Addressing the structure of these creeds, the citations of other scholars therein, and the treatment of the proof for the existence of God, I argue that al-Sanūsī positioned his theological project at a distance from what he considered the excessively philosophized kalām of Faḫr al-Dīn al-Rāzī (d. 606/1209-10) and his followers. I moreover suggest that understanding the creeds requires a greater appreciation for the Maghribi tradition of engagement with The Guide to Conclusive Proofs by Abū l-Maʿālī al-Ǧuwaynī (d. 478/1085).

From Comparative to Interreligious Theology: Perry Schmidt‐Leukel's “Fractal” Version of Pluralism

Perry Schmidt‐Leukel has proposed a “fractal” theory to correlate factors which are replicated across religious traditions. His aim is to develop notions of religious and theological pluralism which have become locked into a somewhat sterile conflict with “inclusivism.” A wide range of thinkers from a variety of religious traditions respond to his initiative, some applauding it, others criticising it as being too abstract to do justice to the particularity of religious phenomena. A highlight is Francis X. Clooney's defence of his comparative theology project as an alternative to pluralism. In reply, Schmidt‐Leukel generously accepts a number of criticisms while reasserting his proposal that on the basis of fractal theory a truly interreligious theology is possible. It remains to be seen how widely fractal theory applies to concrete religious phenomena.

The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology

The World Come of Age: An Intellectual History of Liberation Theology

On Caputo’s Heidegger: A Prolegomenon of Transgressions to a Religion without Religion

AbstractThis article seeks to distill key moments in the early work of the philosopher John D. Caputo. In considering his early investigations of Martin Heidegger, it argues that an adequate account of the trajectory of his later theological project requires a refraction through a crucial double gesture in these earlier writings. To this end, the article follows Caputo’s relationship with Heidegger where the optics of ‘overcoming metaphysics’ are laid bare (the first gesture). In these deliberations, alongside Neo-Scholastic Thomism, it is clear that what constitutes (theological) metaphysics for Caputo is any thinking which fails to think that which ‘gives’ the distinction between Being and beings. The second gesture, then, reveals ‘a certain way’ (d’une certaine maniére) of reading that allows him not only the unique possibility to re-read Scholastic Thomism by way of Meister Eckhart, but also the delimitation of the mythological construal of Being in the later Heidegger himself. The article’s methodological argument is that this transgressionary impulse gleaned from Heidegger, constitutes the ‘origins’ of Caputo’s move into the ethical-religious paradigm of deconstruction and, therefore, is also axiomatic for his later radical theology of ‘religion without religion.’

God and Creation in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth by Tyler R. Wittman

Reviewed by: God and Creation in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth by Tyler R. Wittman Matthew Levering God and Creation in the Theology of Thomas Aquinas and Karl Barth. By Tyler R. Wittman. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2019. Pp. xiv + 315. ISBN: 978-1-108-47067-4 (cloth). Wittman’s guiding question is the following: “Does it suffice to articulate God’s perfection as set forth in God’s works, or must we confess something about God’s perfection as logically antecedent to and possibly obtaining without those acts that ground created reality?” (12). Both Aquinas and Barth, he argues, hold that “questions about God’s relation to creation are bound up with questions about divine act and being” (15). Yet, Aquinas and Barth disagree about how to formulate God’s perfection. Wittman summarizes their different approaches: “Aquinas maintains that God’s external acts correspond to God’s internal being, whereas Barth maintains that God’s external acts correspond to God’s internal acts” (16). The first section of the book focuses upon Aquinas’s theological account of God’s being and activity. Wittman argues that Aquinas’s five ways for demonstrating the existence of God belong to the properly theological project of reckoning with “the things that have been made” and determining how God has therein clearly manifested “his invisible nature, namely, his eternal power and deity” (Rom 1:20). Wittman reminds us that “pure act” is not a definition of God: the human mind cannot comprehend infinite actuality. At all times, Aquinas is keenly aware that to speak of the “causality” of infinite actuality is to speak analogously: God cannot be placed under any genus, including that of “cause.” Wittman emphasizes that divine “simplicity” is a negative doctrine [End Page 161] whose purpose is to ensure that we do not reduce God to a thing among other things. According to Aquinas, God is efficient cause of finite actuality and also exemplar cause of finite actuality, in the sense that creatures are finite similitudes of divine actuality. God is also final cause of finite actuality. God’s goodness means that he creates all things so that they are ordered to share, in diverse modes and to differing degrees, in his goodness. Humans are ordered, by grace but in a manner that takes up and fulfills human nature, to share in the goodness of God’s own beatitude. Given that goodness is self-diffusive, would not perfect goodness be compelled to create or compelled to become incarnate? Wittman answers that the self-diffusion involved here has to do not with efficient causality but with final causality. Considered in himself, God’s infinite goodness “is his own end” and does not need any further diffusion in order to be perfectly fulfilled (64). As a result, God is perfectly Lord in his acts. He is impeded by nothing, depends upon nothing, and stands to gain nothing. This does not mean that he is “unmoved” in the sense of not caring about anything but himself. On the contrary, it means that in his creative (and redemptive) acts, the infinitely blessed and perfect God works, and he works with utmost mercy and love rather than neediness or frustration. Whereas creatures simply are existing modes of relation (or dependency) upon God, God has no “real relation” with creation— which simply means that God is not in a relation of dependency, because God’s beatitude is the source of creation, not the fruit of creation. The fact that God has no neediness is what enables him to be perfectly immanent and freely active in creation. Given that God creates in infinite wisdom and love, what does this mean for our apprehension of God’s “intellect” and “will”? Continuing his survey of Aquinas, Wittman notes that we know that God has these perfections (see Eph 1:11), but we are speaking analogously rather than univocally. Abstracting the reality signified from any finite mode of signification, Aquinas delves into the reality of divine will. On the one hand, there is no “free will” in God willing himself: this must be “necessary,” because God cannot fail to love his own goodness. But there is...

Corpus Mysticum: A Response to Vanhoozer, Horton, and Allen

This article examines Augustine’s theology of the totus Christus, outlined in the article “Totus Christus: A Proposal for Protestant Christology and Ecclesiology”, in greater detail. It refines the terms of the debate about the totus Christus among Reformed theologians in the symposium, explores more deeply the meaning of this doctrine, and raises critical questions of Reformed catholicity as an ongoing theological and ecclesial project informed by this debate.

The Trinity in Qur’anic Idiom: Q 4.171 and the Christian Arabic Presentation of the Trinity as God, his Word, and his Spirit

ABSTRACTSince the early centuries of Islam, the Qur’an’s deep imprint on Arabophone Christians has been evident, not only in their evocation of qur’anic language, but also in their creative employment of the text in constructing their own orthodox Christian Arabic theology. This article investigates the presentation of the Trinity as ‘God, his Word, and his Spirit’ in Christian Arabic theological tracts in the early centuries of Islam. It argues that Q 4.171 played a foundational role in constructing a distinct Christian Arabic Trinitarian theology and that Arabophone Christian writers discerned in it the nucleus of what could be developed as an orthodox Trinitarian theology. It traces the development of the Christian Arabic Trinitarian formulation in four works by Arabophone authors: John Damascene’s On Heresies 100; On the Triune Nature of God; the interreligious disputation in the court of the ʿAbbāsid Caliph al-Maʾmūn attributed to the theologian Theodore Abū Qurra; and the apologetic letter by ʿAbd al-Masīḥ al-Kindī. This article also makes observations on the implications of the Christian Arabic theological project for interreligious encounter in the early Islamic centuries.

Stephen Bantu Biko: An agent of change in South Africa’s socio-politico-religious landscape

This article examines and analyses Biko’s contribution to the liberation struggle in South Africa from the perspective of politics and religion. Through his leading participation in Black Consciousness Movement and Black Theology Project, Biko has not only influenced the direction of the liberation agenda, but he has also left a legacy that if the liberated and democratic South Africa were to follow, this country would be a much better place for all to live in. In fact, the continent as a whole through its endeavours in the African Union underpinned by the African Renaissance philosophy would go a long way in forging unity among the continent’s nation states. Biko’s legacy covers among other things identity, human dignity, education, research, health and job creation. This article will have far reaching implications for the relations between the democratic state and the church in South Africa, more so that there has been such a lack of the church’s prophecy for the past 25 years.

Black Theology Project: Organizational Gift, Intellectual Apparatus—Legacies of Dr. James Cone

Abstract This article offers a brief review of Dr. James H. Cone's involvement with the organizational beginnings and function of the Black Theology Project. The discussion centers on the Project because Cone's writings and participation helped inspire U.S. African descendant clergy, laypeople, academics, activists, and theologians to work collectively in BTP efforts. BTP was also an influential and international touchstone for other groups of African descendants seeking to articulate liberation theology as developed within the historical realities of their existence. The article reviews the origins of BTP and some of what it accomplished during its fifteen-year tenure, drawing on archival materials held at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture of the New York City Public Library. In addition, I was an active member of BTP and served as a past executive director.

Liberation or Reconstruction? Black Theology as Unfinished Business in South Africa

Abstract As a metaphor, “liberation” was at the heart of the Black theological project in South Africa. However, after centuries of colonial and apartheid rule, Black liberation and its association with Black theology need to be examined in light of democracy in South Africa. Some have asserted that the end of apartheid together with the democratization of the country renders Black theology irrelevant. These views are taken further by suggesting that it is not Black people alone who are in need of liberation. The dawn of democracy, therefore, is a significant variable for those seeking to replace liberation with metaphors deemed more “suitable” for the current context. The most significant proposal—which has generated much debate—suggests that Black theology should shift emphasis from “liberation” to “reconstruction.” Often these debates question the continued relevance of “liberation” as a root metaphor. Moreover, they highlight the need for a clearly defined framework for Black theology following the demise of apartheid.

The Rupture of Identity and Identification in James Cone's Africana Theology of Existence

Abstract In this article, I argue that James Cone's Black Theology and Black Power inaugurates a theological project that contributes to the field of Africana philosophies of existence as conceptualized by Lewis Gordon. The article examines the importance of historical concrete situations, provides a phenomenological analysis of anti-Blackness as bad faith, and explores identity and identification in Cone's theological method. Finally, I argue that these themes contribute to the global relevance of Cone's theology of existence by analyzing the work of South African anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko.

Experimental Theology: Theological Anthropology and the Psychological Sciences

The theology and psychology “conversation” is currently constrained by a series of seemingly intractable difficulties, ranging from competing methodological commitments to assumptions about theological projects not being vulnerable to empirical verification or falsifiability. This article suggests that a thoroughgoing experimental theology has the capacity to move beyond a conversational paradigm in ways that current approaches simply do not allow, especially as it concerns an interdisciplinary understanding of what it means to be human. It suggests that Experimental Theology (ET) conceives of “conversation” only as a starting point for interdisciplinary projects; grounds theological theories empirically; and advances both psychological and theological research in new and substantive ways, and toward new ends.

God and Cogito: Semen Frank on the ontological argument

Semen Frank (1877–1950) was one of the first and most ardent advocates of the ontological argument in the twentieth century. He proposed an original interpretation of the ontological argument based on its analogy to Descartes’ Cogito. Frank believed that it is possible to develop Cogito ergo sum into Cogito ergo est ens absolutum. In this paper, I analyze his version of the ontological argument. First, I propose a simple reconstruction of his reasoning, paying attention to its hidden premise. Second, departing from the classical logical interpretations of Descartes’ argument, I show that for Frank the claim that God exists had the same logical properties as Cogito. As a result, it seems that his argument was formally correct, though based on a premise which could hardly be convincing for a non-believer. This should not be surprising, however, since Frank, as most Russian religious philosophers, was not interested in the project of philosophical theology. His main concern was rather the development of philosophy based on religious premises, which might be called “theological philosophy”.

Can “Dangerous Memories” be Communicated? Extending Insights from the Intercultural Theology of Robert J. Schreiter into Dialogue with Subculture and Racialization

Robert J. Schreiter's groundbreaking work on the connection between theological discourse and intercultural hermeneutics is a sound foundation for a theological project that engages culture and its connection to globalization and racialization within the United States. This essay extends insights from Schreiter's work to bear upon the theological problem within the US context of communicating "dangerous memories" of racialized suffering by bringing Schreiter's insights regarding semiotics and intercultural hermeneutics into engagement with the concepts of subculture and racialization. I conclude that this approach can assist theological communication of "dangerous memories" of racialized suffering through highlighting the aberrant theological anthropology conferred through racialization-and its dehumanizing hierarchy of race that offers and prohibits access to the benefits of globalized society depending upon one's entrance into "whiteness"-and semiotically focusing upon culture and subculture as the locations through which communication is possible. Such an approach may lead to a broader, re-humanizing reinterpretation of the signs, codes, and messages that are intertwined with phenotype.

ПРО БАБІЛІСТИЧНИЙ МЕТОД РИЧАРДА СУІНБЕРНА ЯК ЗАСІБ ПОБУДОВИ НОВОЇ ТЕЇСТИЧНОЇ КОСМОЛОГІЇ

In the article a comprehensive study of the probabilistic method of the famous British theologian and philosopher Richard Swinburne. This approach serves as a means of constructing a new theistic cosmology. Richard Swinburne's philosophical and theological project is ambitious and significant. He prefers to combine the truths of faith and the achievements of modern science. However, this should be under the auspices of the religious worldview. This combination is carried out by the author from the standpoint of probabilism. It relies on the selection of inductive evidence of the existence of God and ultimately must demonstrate the proper probability of a central position in the religious worldview – "God exists". Such a combination is, according to the author, the living and active soul of his own "hypothesis of theism". This hypothesis is intended to explain the emergence of the universe, the causes of its occurrence, the existence and functioning of its permanent laws, its orientation to the emergence of animals and the appearance of man. The author widely uses the inductive proof of the existence of God. But he also does not avoid deduction. He deduces the main attributes of God through deduction, interprets the "God-world" relation, examines the essence of God's providential care of the world, together with ethics, gives his vision of the theodicy. The construction of a new theistic cosmology is realized mainly within the limits and means of the apologetics of Swinburne. In this system of knowledge, various ways of proving the existence of God are investigated. Subsequently they receive a proper theological assessment. And, then, it's about faith that seeks understanding. It is shown how the large-scale and ambitious project of constructing a new theology, the author failed to fully realize. The article states that Swinburne prefers to preserve the theoretical orientation of his theorizing, as well as their intellectual respectability and significance. And hence, it significantly degrades its own concept, because it does not fully utilize the theoretical resources of classical theism with its reliance on Revelation.

“A Higher and Purer Shape”: Kaufmann Kohler's Jewish Orientalism and the Construction of Religion in Nineteenth-Century America

AbstractThis article uses the case of Kaufmann Kohler (1843–1926), an intellectual and institutional leader of American Reform Judaism, to explore the relationship between Orientalism and the category of religion in nineteenth-century America. Recent scholarship has shown that the lived religion of nineteenth-century American Jews departs significantly from the ideological hopes of Jewish elites. Connecting the emerging portrait of nineteenth-century Jewish laity with elite arguments for American Judaism, I reconsider Kohler's thought as a theological project out of step with his socioreligious milieu. Kohler is renowned for his theorizing of Judaism as a universal, ethical religion. As scholars have demonstrated repeatedly, defining Judaism as a “religion” was an important feature of Reform thought. What these accounts have insufficiently theorized, however, is the political context that ties the categorization of religion to the history of Orientalism that organized so many late nineteenth-century discussions of religion, Jewish and not. Drawing on work by Tracy Fessenden, John Modern, and Tisa Wenger, I show that Kohler's universal, cosmopolitan religion is a Jewish version of the Protestant secular. Like these Protestant modernists, Kohler defines Reform Judaism as a religion that supersedes an atavistic tribalism bound to materiality and ritual law. Being Jewish, for Kohler, means being civilized; reforming the soul of Judaism goes together with civilizing Jewish bodies and creating a Judaism that could civilize the world in an era in which religion and imperialism were overlapping interpretive projects with racial and gendered entanglements.