Theological Concern Research Articles

Attractive proposals: An Appreciative Appraisal of Douglas Farrow’s Theological Negotiations

Douglas Farrow’s Theological Negotiations is a muscular, reciprocally enriching set of explorations of neuralgic loci of perennial theological concern. Articulating his proposals with characteristic verve and navigating alertly through the tradition and its resources, Farrow has produced an impressive and wide-ranging work of systematic theology that is also an exemplar of Catholic ecumenical engagement. In chapters that take up the nature–grace dialectic in its epistemological, anthropological, doxological, sacramental, and soteriological keys, Farrow develops attractive proposals centered in the incarnation and ascension of the Word made flesh who is seated evermore at the Father’s right hand in glory. In this sense, Theological Negotiations presses forward and delivers upon the insights and promissory tenor of his earlier Ascension Theology.

Divine Wrath in Ancient Egypt

This article aims at examining the theme of divine wrath according to Egyptian religious beliefs, in connection with deities and worshippers. It is a matter of theological concern to examine the theme of divine wrath in various texts describing the rage of deities. The paper thoroughly discusses the theme of divine wrath, its addressees, effects, purposes, provocations, and the possibility of avoidance and pacification, as well as the linguistic expressions of wrath. It discusses the notion of wrath, its perceived consequences and infliction on the deities, living humans and the deceased. It also examines divine wrath in relation to the experience of suffering and affliction as well as that of protection and welfare. The analysis provides information on the core of the Egyptian religion investigated from the perspective of wrath.

John of Damascus: rewriting the division of heresy and schism

St. John Damascene’s writings on heresies – specifically those texts against Nestorianism and Monophysitism – demonstrate a careful consideration of how thin the line is between schism and heresy. In the texts on heresies, Damascenus endeavors to reread the separation of certain Churches as an ecclesial problem and not only a theological problem. His writings blur the lines between heresy, nor­mally a theological concern, and schism, an ecclesiastical term normally reserved for the separation of Christian Churches. St. John Damascene’s teachings against heresies fit well within the culture of florilegia and compilations. John’s goal, particularly in the De haeresibus, seems to have been to contribute scholarly to the growing world of anti-heretical texts. His texts add to the already large list of known heresies, registering heresies that arose after the council of Chalcedon. Yet John’s texts against heresies are not meant simply to combat false tea­chings. In some cases, particularly Monophysitism, Damascenus contends that the terms used by orthodox (pro-Chalcedonian) Christians and Monophysite Chris­tians mean the same thing. We must read the Liber de haeresibus in the context of his other writings (e.g. Contra Jacobitas or Contra Nestorianos) in order to determine his true purpose. These definitions aim not to divide Christians based only on teachings, but to show the common understanding present in Christology in spite of different vocabulary. With a proper understanding of heresy, John of Damascus is able to provide a more complete description of the schisms in the Church of his time.

Creational Problems for Soul-Emergence from Matter: Philosophical and Theological Concerns

Summary Discussions on soul origins are perceived as antiquated at best. However, there is a recent resurgence of interest in the nature and origins of the mind. This is due in part to the recent developments on the nature of “emergent” properties and/or substances in the contemporary literature on the philosophy of mind. As a contribution to this discussion, I examine the two most prominent theories of mental origins (e. g., Timothy O’Connor and William Hasker) and find that each encounter some noteworthy problems. With these in mind, I recommend that some form of Creationism deserves our attention. It provides a solution to the various philosophical and theological concerns associated with the previously mentioned emergence theories of the mind. Finally, I lay out a more satisfying theory of the soul’s creation in a way that accounts for the benefits of emergentism.

Magical Transformations on the Early Modern English Stage

Magical Transformations on the Early Modern English Stage

‘Is Anything Too Hard for Yahweh?’: Fulfillment of Promise and Threat in Genesis 18–19

The Yahwist's narrative in Gen. 18.1–16, 20–22a, 33b, and 19.1–27a, 28 focuses on a single theological concern, namely, the power of Yahweh to fulfill the promise of a son for Sarah and Abraham. In the annunciation scene, the deity himself articulates this issue: ‘Is anything too hard for Yahweh?’ The Sodom tale suggests a negative answer—nothing is too hard for Yahweh—by demonstrating the power of Yahweh to fulfill a threat of destruction. The theological reasoning of the Yahwist who joined the Mamre and Sodom episodes is close, though not identical, to the thought of the exilic and post-exilic texts in Jeremiah 32 and Zechariah 7–8.

Saudi Clerics and Shiʿa Islam

Saudi Clerics and Shiʿa Islam

Inspiration in the Age of Enlightenment by Sarah Eron

Reviewed by: Inspiration in the Age of Enlightenment by Sarah Eron Elizabeth Kraft Sarah Eron. Inspiration in the Age of Enlightenment. Newark: Delaware, 2014. Pp. xiii + 250. $85. Ms. Eron challenges conventional wisdom regarding eighteenth-century enthusiasm, linking it to a new kind of inspiration created by Augustan writers in response to modernity: a "practice" characterized by secularization and self-authorization rather than "a historical event," she defines enthusiasm broadly as an "ethos." Concentrating on the literary trope of invoking the muses, Ms. Eron finds in the works of Shaftesbury, Pope, Fielding, and Barbauld evidence of "worlding" the texts by rhetorically locating them within the public sphere. These writers employed invocation in order to "appeal to the social other" in the creation of communities of judgment and social exchange. Enthusiasm, as Ms. Eron acknowledges, was the source of much anxiety for eighteenth-century cultural commentators, but she finds that such anxiety produced reformation rather than rejection: "What had hitherto been seen as a religious and metaphysical phenomenon was in the early eighteenth century appropriated by poets and novelists as a means of figuring poetic inspiration." Augustan writers treated enthusiasm as an aesthetic rather than a theological concern and thereby tempered, governed, and transformed disruptive energies in the creation of a vital public sphere. Ms. Eron pursues her argument in five chapters devoted to three Augustan writers (Shaftesbury, Pope, and Fielding) and one late-eighteenth-century / Romantic writer (Barbauld). The heart of Ms. Eron's study, and the strength of her work, resides in her fine readings of Shaftesbury and Pope. The three chapters devoted to these writers (one to Shaftesbury and two, appropriately, to Pope) firmly establish the process and point of the "worlding" of literary discourse. Shaftesbury's treatment of enthusiasm and sympathetic identification in The Moralists and A Letter Concerning Enthusiasm speaks to the general template of Augustan inspiration in that it highlights the "conversational aspects of the public sphere" in its reformulation of the classical invocation to the muse. While the works take opposing stances toward the addressing of the other (The Moralists featuring an interlocutor who tempers enthusiasm with judgment and A Letter relegating that role to the audience of the author's imagination), the emphasis in both is on the "social nature of inspiration" and the "redefinition of enthusiasm" as an aesthetic experience followed (and tempered) by judicious critical mediation. For Shaftesbury, this two-part process is the antidote to blind enthusiasm (which he associates with idolatry); the public sphere of dialogic examination thus becomes the site of "unveiling" in Shaftesbury's terms, or "worlding," to employ Ms. Eron's term. In Ms. Eron's discussion of Shaftesbury (which is also germane to Pope and Fielding) she emphasizes his notion that "[s]atire, or humor, . . . [is] a cure for enthusiastic [End Page 80] disorders." Shaftesbury's address to Lord Somers (his human muse) in A Letter asserts the force and power of imagination and creation while at the same time exhibiting awareness of audience and exchange. In the Letter itself, Shaftesbury imitates "the very thing . . . [he] satirically critiques." In this manner, the way of later Augustan writers, as well, Shaftesbury encourages skepticism, self-awareness, and judgment in his reader as well as himself, forming community by creating his own muse in "the best kind of critical audience." Ms. Eron's treatment of Pope's use of invocation spans two chapters, the first devoted to the muse of The Rape of the Lock and the second primarily to Essay on Criticism, Essay on Man, and The Dunciad. For her, the Rape is a satire on enthusiasm, which, especially in its mock-epic substitution of sylphs for gods, reveals that in the modern world "[d]ivine inspiration no longer serves." It is the poet himself who has the power to move through his "rhetoric and agency." He depends on the reader's ability to judge and critique—unlike Belinda whose enthusiastic excesses and solipsistic desires stand in satiric support of the need for a sociability based on "meaningful language and critical responsiveness." The muses of Essay on Criticism (Walsh), Essay on Man (Bolingbroke), and The Dunciad (Swift) are invoked by Ms. Eron to further her...

Theology Outside the Clinic

Theology Outside the Clinic Autumn Reinhardt‐Simpson Introduction The majority of a woman's life will be spent worried about either getting pregnant or not getting pregnant. For those that choose motherhood, even more time is spent worrying about poverty, health care, education, racism, and a whole host of other concerns related to her reproductive and family life in some way. Reproduction and family care is the primary focus of a woman's life for the simple reason that she exists in a world that is not framed to understand her biological, emotional, and social realities. Where society and religious institutions have not stepped up to include her experience as a primary focus of concern, she must instead focus her own energy on framing her life around those biological and social realities. Since the beginning of time, women have had every other reality of their lives made subject to her biology. For instance, a woman's career trajectory must take into account the possibility that she may become pregnant and decide to have children. Apart from the time she must be off to recover, the reality of our capitalist work structure and gendered parenting expectations practically insist that she will need additional time off to care for sick family or to stay at home for a period while her children are young. Women are, in fact, expected to take on the “second shift” as a matter of accepted fact. The power women's biology has to either liberate her or to circumscribe her life can mean the difference between being a full participant in her own life and becoming a footnote in the lives of others. Along with the work world, society, and other areas, theology has often failed to take into account the varied lives of women. While the twentieth century saw an explosion in feminist theology and biblical interpretation, theology often still failed to address the single, overriding concern of every single woman who is physically capable of becoming pregnant—the power of reproduction to shape her life in a way that is different from men. There is an incredible amount of work now being done to rectify the situation, but we still see many more theological defenses of women's subjection to biology than we do liberating theologies of reproductive justice. Those theological defenses of women's reproductive rights that do exist tend to focus on statistics, abstractions, and apology, as though women should be allowed to guide their reproductive lives simply because it is expedient for everyone else. Theologically, women's experiences have been written about as a subset to the “normal” and “standard” spiritual life, which is to say, that of men. Feminist theology is seen as a kind of theology, not as theology itself. Any theology that sees, either implicitly or explicitly, the experience of men as the default, is a theology that cannot speak to all of humanity. It's my hope that this short paper, with its focus on women's lived experiences and not on simple academic abstractions, will go some small way to beginning the work of a woman‐centered theology of reproductive rights/justice. I have structured this essay in sections dealing with theologically based concepts I have witnessed outside the clinic as I escorted patients past protesters. These include the theologies at work in protesters and clinic workers. I have provided what I believe are sound theological arguments that speak to the urgency of recognizing reproductive justice and especially non‐coercion in childbearing as a theological concern for women and the health of the entire church of which they are a vital part. Reproductive justice is an incredibly large topic that encompasses a wide variety of issues and concerns connected to women's ability to procreate. Because the subject is such a large one, I focus mostly in this paper on the right of women to control their fertility through abortion. I frame my arguments through the lens of my experience working with women at an abortion clinic in Richmond, Virginia from 2010 to 2015. However, it is important that readers understand the totality of reproductive justice so that we can set the arguments within their proper framework...

Transgressions: Erich Przywara, G. W. F. Hegel, and the Principle of Non-Contradiction

This article concerns the nature of reason in the work of the Twentieth Century Catholic theologian Erich Przywara and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. The discussion centers on three interlocking issues: (a) the question whether proper thinking submits to or transgresses the principle of non-contradiction; (b) the relationship between reason and history; (c) the theological concern with distinguishing the “history of reason” and the divine life. It is argued that both Hegel and Przywara give an account of reason where there are moments of contradiction, and that this is a necessary feature of historical existence. Further, while Przywara and others are concerned with Hegel’s making reason’s reconciliation of contradiction in history identical with the divine life, I argue that although this is a real concern, Hegel’s account is more equivocal than normally admitted. Finally, I argue that the distinguishing feature between Przywara and Hegel is what happens after the moment of contradiction; that is where we see the most important difference between an analogical and a dialectical account of reason.

Editors’ Note

In the Summer of 2015 Sotiris Mitralexis and Andrew T. J. Kaethler organized a conference held in Delphi, Greece, titled “Ontology and History: A Challenging and Auspicious Dialogue for Philosophy and Theology.” The conference brought together over sixty scholars from various parts of the globe, representing Orthodoxy, Catholicism, and Protestantism—truly an ecumenical affair. The topic of the conference, which is well represented in this volume of Forum Philosophicum, was purposefully broad because it is a question that remains open and which sits at the centre of the Christian philosophical and theological tradition. Joseph Ratzinger posited in several works that the interplay between salvation history and ontology is the most pressing concern for modern theology. In Introduction to Christianity—a modest title for a robust piece of theology—Ratzinger notes that early in the Christian tradition a division arose between theological metaphysics and theology of history, each seen as two different things; “people indulge either in ontological speculation or anti-philosophical theology of salvation history, thus losing in a really tragic way the original unity of Christian thought. At the start Christian thinking is neither merely ‘soteriological’ nor merely ‘metaphysical’ but molded by the unity of history and being. Here lies an important task for modern theological work, which is torn once again by this dilemma.”

Book Review: Cloud of the Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement

Cloud of Impossible: Negative Theology and Planetary Entanglement. By Catherine Keller. Insurrections: Critical Studies in Religion, Politics, and Culture. New York: Columbia University Press, 2015. 408 pp. $35.00 (paper).In Cloud of Impossible, Catherine Keller marches resolutely into tension between negative theologies and theologies of relation. Kellers project is a breath of fresh air for theologians who have long wanted to hold these two approaches together but have been unable to see a way forward. This book provides a third space (p. 313), a distinguishing feature of Kellers theology, in which to grapple with question that she does not explicitly pose until near end: How shall we greet unknown before us? (p. 286; authors italics). Keller leans into paradox of a constructively that attends to the tension between cloud of our nonknowing and crowd of our nonseparability (p. 31). She consults a cloud/ crowd of often unexpected witnesses, including not only theologians and philosophers but also poets, scientists, and indie rock groups: Emily Dickinson, Walt Whitman, Max Planck, and band Cloud Cult all make appearances.The book is divided into three sections (plus a Before and After, introduction and conclusion), each titled with a word derived from fold, pli, Kellers key metaphor for both relation and apophasis: Complications, Explications, and Implications. In part 1 Keller traces her lineage in constructive theological tradition, with its concern for relational theology (chapter 1). In chapter 2 she offers a similar genealogy of negative/ theology, rooting it in Moses' mystical encounter with divine at Sinai (p. 50). She follows thread of luminous darkness through church fathers and mystical thinkers, culminating in anonymous Cloud of Unknowing (her title being a nod to this misty and mystical text). The section closes with Nicholas of Cusa, whose ideas about learned ignorance and God as possibility itself' (p. 110) provide crease along which Keller folds together pieces of her theology of apophatic entanglement (p. 6; author's italics).In part 2, Keller engages quantum physics, a field that she characterizes as preoccupied with a mystery just as theology has been. Our Spooky Entanglements (the title of chapter 4) or our mutual implication (enfoldedness) in one another's lives is expressed even in behavior of particles-and scientists do not quite know why. A treatment of process philosophy follows naturally in chapter 5, where Keller brings Gilles Deleuze and Alfred North Whitehead into conversation. Short chapters on Walt Whitman and Judith Butler conclude part 2. …

An appreciative contextual response to Jean-Pierre Wils, ‘Is there a future for “medical ethics”?’ Just Health as a public theological concern

This article takes the form of an appreciative contextual response to the notion of ‘just health’ that is formulated in Jean-Pierre Wils’ article, ‘Is there a future for medical ethics?’ It approaches the notion of just health in the South African context from a public theological vantage point. The article addresses the issues of justice, care and the future of ‘medical ethics’ by adopting a position that seeks to constructively engage empire, economics and apathy in relation to just health in South Africa.

A Study on Three Contextual Theologians in Korea:SungBum Yun, TongShik Ryu, and SunHwan Pyun

This paper mainly investigates the life and thoughts of the three Korean theologians (i.e., SungBum Yun, TongShik Ryu, and SunHwan Pyun), who tried to make Korean and/or contextual theology. SungBum Yun (1916-1980), who regarded “Revelation” as the main content of the Gospel, offered the Confucian concept of “Sung” ( , sincerity) 誠 as the replacement for the Western theological notion of revelation for the Far East Asians who live in the Confucian cultural context. The main contextual theological concern of TongShik Ryu (1922-the present) has changed or developed from religions in Korea (1960s), Shamanism (1970s) to PungRyu (풍류, 1980-90s), and then Ryu is more recently interested in YeSul(예술, Art or Beauty) theology. The Korean theology of SunHwan Pyun (1928-1995) is generally called “ToChakHwa (토착화),” which means “contextualization” or “Religious Pluralism” in Korea. Pyun paid attention to the religious pluralistic context in Korea, and he asserted that Korean Christianity should overcome three aspects (i.e., the Western prejudice toward other religions, Ecclesiocentricism, and the exclusive absoluteness of Christology) of Western Christianity. The three figures might be Koreanized theologians in that they dealt with the Koreans’ cultural and spiritual mind through various ways such as Korean traditional religions. However, it is hard to say that they were authentic contextual theologians, because they ignored the Hanful (suffering or oppressed) social situation as well as the need and tradition of most Korean churches. Thus, an authentic Korean and/or contextual theology must meet the demands of people’s cultural, traditional, spiritual and religious mind; socio-politically and economically variable situation; and Korean churches; under the guidance of Triune God.

Between Jewish Tradition and Modernity: Rethinking an Old Opposition. Essays in Honor of David Ellenson ed. by Michael A. Meyer, David N. Myers (review)

Reviewed by: Between Jewish Tradition and Modernity: Rethinking an Old Opposition. Essays in Honor of David Ellenson ed. by Michael A. Meyer, David N. Myers Robert M. Seltzer (bio) Michael A. Meyer and David N. Myers, editors, Between Jewish Tradition and Modernity: Rethinking an Old Opposition. Essays in Honor of David Ellenson. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2014. xiv + 360 pp. Reviewing a Festschrift presents a special problem: contributions by colleagues, friends, and/or former students of the person being honored can cover a wide range of topics only tangentially connected to each other. Should the reviewer dwell on the achievements of the honoree or look for elements that the collected essays might have in common? This was not a problem in reviewing Between Jewish Tradition and Modernity, a collection of articles of high quality, interest, and value. All of the authors of essays in this volume pay homage to David Ellenson. Raised in a modern Orthodox family in Newport News, VA., he received his BA from the College of William and Mary, his MA in Jewish Studies at the University of Virginia, his PhD from Columbia University, and rabbinic ordination from the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion where, after several years as a faculty member, he served as president from 2002 to 2014. In his college days influences on him included sociologists of religion Max Weber, Peter Berger, and Jacob Katz. His first book was Rabbi Esriel Hildesheimer and the Creation of Modern Jewish Orthodoxy (1990). His many studies on Judaism in Israel and America are in the dense nine pages of Ellenson’s bibliography appended to the volume. A personal note: his oeuvre includes “Zion in the Mind of the American Rabbinate during the 1940s,” which appeared in the collection The Americanization of the Jews, that I edited with Norman S. Cohen (1995). The essays in Between Jewish Tradition and Modernity are arranged under four sub-headings: Law, Ritual, Thought, and Culture. Together they constitute a mosaic of topics connected to American Jewish religious life in the last half century, such as post-denominationalism, the impact of the counterculture, new conceptions of ethnicity, changing styles of worship, the growing importance of feminism, and the State of Israel. To be sure, there are pieces that do not fit tidily into this mold, such as Jonathan Sarna’s essay on a mid-nineteenth-century controversy over whether it was appropriate to erect a statue of the New Orleans Jewish philanthropist Judah Touro in view of traditional anti-iconic Jewish teachings. Zvi Zohar examines a responsum from early twentieth-century Salonica on converting the non-Jewish partner of an intermarriage (a forerunning of widespread occurrence in contemporary American Judaism). Michael Marmur discusses the early writings of Abraham Joshua [End Page 161] Heschel before he arrived in Cincinnati to teach at the Hebrew Union College and went on to the Jewish Theological Seminary. Rachel Adler critiques Rav J. B. Soloveichik’s equivocations on feminism. As noted, however, most of the pieces deal with more recent developments. Arnold Eisen critiques the venerable Zionist trope of shelilat hagalut expressed in a talk by A. B. Yehoshua. Adam S. Ferziger discusses how the presence of Reform Judaism has sharpened the self-image of Orthodoxy in Israel whereas, conversely, Jack Wertheimer notes how the complexity of American Judaism has affected “Orthodox Outreach Workers.” Notably missing from the collection is concern for Jewish theology, perhaps a result of the list of contributors but also of the paucity of major new theologies of Judaism. Premodern/modern is a critical distinction in the history of science, technology, economics, ideologies, philosophy, art–and in Judaism. As Arnold J. Band notes in his essay on S.Y. Agnon, the relation between what we think of as tradition and modernity is dialectical. Affecting each other, they repeatedly reshaped Judaism as a whole. A central feature of the modern is repeated change. In the Festschrift this appears in Steven M. Lowenstein’s depiction of the separate paths taken by modernizing German and Dutch Jewry. This theme is driven home in Wendy Zierler’s discussion of the avant-garde film Momento, which illustrates how the pre-modern past is repeatedly rewritten. Similar...

Newman on Vatican II by Ian Ker

NEWMAN STUDIES JOURNAL 72 Newman on Vatican II. By Ian Ker.Oxford:Oxford University Press,2014.Pages: 192. Hardcover, $40.00. ISBN: 9780198717522. This concise and accessible account of Newman’s significance with regard to the teachings of the Second Vatican Council and their subsequent critical interpretation provides an informative overall view of a question that, either overtly or covertly, is likely to become ever more salient. As Newman Studies and theological as well as historical discourses onVatican II expand,the relationship between these two subjects emerges as a compelling and complex field of study, increasingly in need of further exploration. Ian Ker,Theology Faculty at the University of Oxford and already the author and editor of several works on John Henry Newman’s life and thought, offers in his most recent book an important opening salvo in the heated debate over the contribution of Newman—such a prominent and and yet criticized thinker—to Catholic intellectual tradition.The introduction to Newman on Vatican II offers, in the clearest possible terms, a comprehensive synopsis of the book by outlining the author’s key questions and arguments, treated in six balanced chapters. The first chapter’s emphasis on labels (Newman as a liberal or a conservative) shows, in a sense, the impasse from which Newman did not live long enough to escape, and in which Newman studies might seem embroiled as well. Ker coins the expression “the conservative radical” (which is also the title of this initial chapter) in order to overcome the particular horror definitionis which haunts every serious Newman scholar. Nonetheless, the deployment of new terminological devices, combining this and that disparate element, does not represent an effective challenge to previous scholarship. The latter is affected by an antihistorical bias: to reconcile Newman with his own time, and to define him simply as a nineteenth-century Catholic, would mean nothing at all, or, at best, would undermine his personal originality. Ian Ker’s work,with its primarily theological concern,fits comfortably into this old pattern, and although the author strives to demonstrate how relevant Newman is for today’s Church and world, hermeneutic of Councils, and most especially evangelization, he fails to explain why. Having said that, and putting aside these problematic premises, the book is undoubtedly a useful resource for reconsideringVatican II and its aftermath in the light of the heritage of its so-called“absent Father.” Particularly rich in ideas and interesting concepts are Chapters Four and Six.In the former, titled “The Charismatic Church,” much space and attention is devoted to reviewing the current controversial views of the interpretation of charisms, and to present a widely varied group of authors within and outside the Catholic tradition (Dulles, Küng,Vanhoye, and Käsemann).Then, Newman’s contribution to Vatican II is framed within this debate, and is described as being based on the integration of the charismatic and hierarchical dimensions.Quite predictably,the Fathers are pointed out as living examples and inspirational sources for this unitary approach. The sixth chapter,on the other hand,deals with the question of secularization and the new evangelization using Newman’s own perspective as a multi-layered framework that incorporates theology, philosophy, history, literature, and various 73 combinations of these. In a very interesting and enjoyable way, Ker displays a real mosaic of Newman’s texts,drawn from Anglican and Catholic sermons,the Grammar of Assent,the Apologia, Development,and last but not least Callista,which according to the author provides one of the clearest accounts of Newman’s understanding of the interplay between the dictates of conscience and the demands of the heart. The rest of the book is primarily concerned with demonstrating the conformity and empowering potential of Newman’s thought with regard to the “hermeneutic of reform”1 endorsed by Pope Benedict XVI in 2005. Chapter Two,“The Hermeneutic of Change in Continuity,”addresses the subject directly and in detail by submitting one of the most disputed documents of the Council, the Declaration on Religious Liberty Dignitatis Humanae (1965), to Newman’s seven tests “of varying cogency, independence and applicability,to discriminate healthy developments of an idea from its state of corruption and decay.”2 There follows...

Organizational Research as Practical Theology

Secularism is a prevailing norm for scholarly organizational research, yet the post-secular turn in philosophy provides an opening for researchers to work from theological perspectives and inquire into organizational topics of theological concern. This study introduces practical theology as a method for pursuing organizational research. This method involves iterative, mutual engagement with empirical data, social theories, and theological traditions. Research done as practical theology can contribute to advancing organization theory and management practice by promoting awareness of theological assumptions operating in research and organizations and by motivating constructive and critical proposals that are unreachable from a secular perspective.

대럴 구더의 선교적 신학과 교회론

Darrell Guder aims to transform from mission and theology to missional theology. For that process, he emphasizes that Christians should get out of the legacy of Christendom and the reductionism of the gospel. The theology of Christendom rarely concerns mission as a major discipline. And the gospel has been reduced to mainly provide an individual salvation in North America. In fact, salvation and witnessing of the gospel cannot be separated but many Christians accept the benefit of the gospel but barely take a vocation of witnessing. Guder claims, “the concern of missional theology is that this central commitment to evangelization should itself be defined by the following conviction: the very call to follow Christ is a call to become a fisher of people, an invitation to join God’s mission and become part of the witness to the inbreaking reign of God”(Guder, 2006:3). For Guder, the definition of missional hermeneutics is “the basic assumption undergirding our interpretation of all New Testament literature: the missional vocation of each community, their sense of themselves as called into being for the continuation of apostolic witness”(Guder, 2007:108). Guder reinterprets the Nicene Marks with an apostolic emphasis to revitalize the struggling mainline denominations of the church in North America and the stagnate state of the ecumenical movements. Guder argues that the contemporary challenge for Christianity in North America is the transformation from church with mission to missional church. It does not means that the churches in the North America have to do more foreign missions or focus only on home missions. Rather, he claims the churches should recover the nature of church, which is the mission of God. Each church should be recognized her vocation of witnessing the gospel in any given situation. For doing that she needs continuous conversion by the Holy Spirit in Christ.

Forgetting the power of leaven: The historical method in recent New Testament theology

AbstractErnst Troeltsch and Heikki Räisänen have raised significant challenges to the way New Testament theology handles the relation of history and theology. Troeltsch pushed Christian scholars to apply the historical method's three principles of criticism, analogy and correlation consistently to their work and thus embrace empiricism. Räisänen continues this trajectory by splitting New Testament theology into its descriptive and reflective tasks, resulting in a programme which questions the unity of the canon, the appropriateness of prescription and the role of church authority in New Testament theology. With these challenges in mind, this article examines four recent New Testament theologies to see how they use the historical method. It finds that these works exhibit different ad hoc ways of using the historical method, picking it up and setting it down at will. Peter Balla accepts New Testament theology as descriptive and historical while claiming it can also be theological by studying the content in the New Testament. Despite this embrace of the historical method, Balla remains uncomfortable with bare empiricism and pushes back on its naturalism. Georg Strecker splits the world into two: one part which can be investigated by the historical method and another part which lies outside its normal subject matter. The result is that he uses the historical method everywhere except where his main theological concern lies – Jesus’ resurrection. I. Howard Marshall similarly holds the historical method to be necessary for New Testament theology but largely ignores it in light of narrative-theological concerns. Frank Matera takes a purposefully literary approach to New Testament theology and generally ignores the historical method. He does invoke it, however, when the text becomes difficult and alternative readings must be found. The methodological inconsistency demonstrated by these New Testament theologies leads the article to conclude that this type of historical New Testament theology is a failed enterprise. A theological understanding of history based on work by Murray Rae is then proposed as an alternative which allows for methodological consistency in synthetic work on the New Testament.

Food for Theologians

In this essay, I present eating as a vital theological concern and an integral part of the church’s ministries and mission in the world. I argue that food is not reducible to the status of a commodity but is instead God’s love made delectable. The production and the sharing of good food is a witness to God’s presence among us.