Theological Enterprise Research Articles

Biblical Interpretation and Analytic Reflection

Analytic skill can contribute to a theology of the Bible and a theological hermeneutic in two ways, by refining the formulation of a doctrine of Scripture and a correlative hermeneutic, and by illuminating how problematic hermeneutical presuppositions have in some cases become part of exegetical practice. The contribution that the analytic style of reflection can make to the theological enterprise need not be vitiated by a common criticism of analytic modes of engaging with texts, namely, that they tend toward being ahistorical, though the objection deserves to be considered carefully.

The Symbiosis of Philosophy and Theology in Blondel’s Supernatural Hypothesis

Maurice Blondel’s philosophy makes strong claims about the theological enterprise. Namely, philosophy and theology achieve their fulfillment only in mutual dependence and both court superstition to the extent that they attempt self-sufficiency. This symbiotic relationship drives Blondel’s seminal work Action, which not only deduces a hypothetical necessity for the supernatural from a realist phenomenology but also establishes strictly philosophical exigencies with theological import: a true revelation in sensory signs, a historical Savior as Mediator, and a sacramental practice, a robust response to the Enlightenment critique of the Christian religion.

Aquinas in the Conceptual Border

Aquinas in the Conceptual Border

Was There a Theological Turn in Phenomenology?

This article examines the possibility that phenomenology was “always already” a theological enterprise, by outlining some of the foundational criticisms levelled by Michel Foucault and Louis Althusser. For both thinkers, the phenomenological stress on “lived experience” grants an undue primacy to the realm of “interiority”; as a result, subjectivity is left, not just reified, but also deified. By contrast, both Foucault and Althusser will argue for understanding the subject as constituted rather than constitutive; philosophy’s task, accordingly, is to delineate the broader structures (economic, ideological, discursive, linguistic, etc.) that create “lived experience,” rather than to hypostatize the subject as the privileged bearer of logos. As well as outlining the contours of this critique, however, the article indicates some of the shortcomings entailed in a total disavowal of “lived experience.”

Finding the voice of Judaism within practical theological research

ABSTRACTWhile adapting to the changing realities of pluralism and globalisation, it is imperative the field of practical theology consider the unheard voice of the religious other as an indispensable theological interlocutor. In this article, I argue for the examination of contemporary Jewish practice as one potential starting point. In order to engage in such inquiries, I first propose the necessity of post-Shoah theology as an indispensable conceptual lens that gives credence to the damaging effects of Christian supersessionism. Second, I offer my own research on how Jewish rabbis practice Shabbat as a working case study. In this regard, I propose the use of phenomenological research as a methodology that gives voice to how Jews describe their own experience. In conclusion, I offer reflexive gleanings for the enterprise of practical theology.

Theology before and after Bishop Robinson's Honest to God (1963)

Bishop John Robinson's Honest to God (1963) may be judged as a bombshell that blew the roof off the church, not because it introduced original thinking, but because it brought to unsuspecting people in the pews some knowledge of the developments that had been taking place for quite some time in academic theology. It initiated the turbulent sixties from which time onwards the slow decline in church allegiance began to accelerate in the Western world. The thought of Dietrich Bonhoeffer, Rudolf Bultmann and Paul Tillich, which Robinson summarized in his book, were themselves simply the twentieth century version of the radical changes in theology made necessary by the advent of the post-Enlightenment world, and which had been set in motion in rather different ways at the beginning of the nineteenth century by the philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and the theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher. Since the Enlightenment brought to humans the freedom to think for themselves - Bonhoeffer labelled this phenomenon 'Humanity's coming of age' - so the theological enterprise gradually changed from being the exposition of divinely revealed dogmas to the human exploration of religious experience. In retrospect, Robinson's book is to be judged a significant marker in a process of ever-changing theological thought.

Analytic Theology as Declarative Theology

Analytic theology seeks to utilize conceptual tools and resources from contemporary analytic philosophy for ends that are properly theological. As a theological methodology relatively new movement in the academic world, this novelty might render it illegitimate. However, I argue that there is much in the recent analytic theological literature that can find a methodological antecedent championed in the fourteenth century known as declarative theology. In distinction from deductive theology—which seeks to extend the conclusions of theology beyond the articles of faith—declarative theology strives to make arguments for the articles of faith. It does it not to provoke epistemic assent to the truth of the articles, but serves as a means of faith seeking understanding. In this paper, examples are drawn from recent analytic discussions to illustrate the manner that analytic theology has been, is, and can be an instance of declarative theology, and thus a legitimate theological enterprise for today.

The Territories of Science and Religion, by Peter Harrison

The aim of Peter Harrison’s ambitious book is to destroy once and for all ‘the idea of a perennial conflict between science and religion’ (p. 5). There can be no doubt that there was no such conflict, but this will come as little surprise to any even semi-serious historian of science, being the preserve only of figures such as the former biologist and current professional internet provocateur Richard Dawkins—and even the most devout zealots of the Church of Dawkins know that he is not to be taken seriously as an authority on matters historical. But Harrison’s secondary aims are both far more sophisticated and far more interesting, for he wants to show that not only were ‘science’ and ‘religion’ not opposed, but that they were consistently in a symbiotic relationship predicated on the fact that, until the seventeenth century, neither of them existed, at least in the modern sense of the concepts; when they did emerge, one result was the scientific revolution. According to Harrison, from the ancient world through to the sixteenth century, ‘religion’ never implied a set of doctrinal propositions, but was an ‘inner disposition’, corresponding consistently to the meaning of the Latin term religio. ‘Science’, meanwhile, was similarly never a set of propositions about nature, but likewise a moral or ‘spiritual exercise’ intended to cultivate a ‘habit of mind’ and ‘a particular kind of life’ (p. 18): this was the case for everyone, from the ancient Greeks (Thales sacrificed an ox when he discovered his famous theorem [p. 24]) to the medieval Christian natural philosophers, who, Harrison claims, cared little for the abstracted truth of natural philosophical ideas, because, for them, ‘the intelligibility of nature lay primarily in its moral and theological meanings’ (p. 60). Only in the seventeenth century, when, in the wake of the Reformation, ‘religion’ began to take on the meaning of a system of belief, did ‘science’ concomitantly emerge as a discipline designed to produce true propositions about the natural world (although it was still conceived of as a spiritual exercise, albeit now one tied to the entirely new enterprise of natural theology, which, we are told, was non-existent in the medieval world).

“PENTECOSTAL THEOLOGY” AS CONTRADICTIO IN TERMINIS: A PERSPECTIVE ON THE PAST AND PRESENT

The Pentecostal movement, especially in its early days, has been accused of anti-intellectualism and a lack of a developed theological tradition, and justifiably so. However, although Pentecostals make negative remariks about “theology” they define it in a specific manner that allows them at the same time to take seriously their own theological enterprise. It is argued here that in order to understand their viewpoint it is necessary to take into consideration the movement’s theological principles in order to understand its view of “theology”. Pentecostal theology’s seeming anti-intellectualism must be understood in a historic sense as the movement’s reaction to what they perceive to be the danger of “theology” that represents creedalism and formalism, while Spirit baptism and the resultant life guided by the Spirit is explained in terms of the development of the believer’s spiritual dimension that may at times stand in contrast to intellectual capabilities. Its restorationist motive requires the Pentecostal movement to return to the experience and power of the earliest Church, driven by its apocalyptic-eschatological expectation of the imminent second coming of Christ. It is necessary that Pentecostalism’s stance on “theology” as well as its own theological principles be understood in order to understand its angle on its own theological enterprises. It bases its theology on experiences of God’s reality, described in the terms provided by biblical narratives and leading to a spirituality that occupies the affections as well as the minds of its practitioners. Although their theology has traditional elements that it shares with other traditions, Pentecostalism’s spirituality requires that its theology should be based on first-hand experiences with God, while at the same time it defines some doctrines in another manner due to the Spirit meeting the fellowship of believers

Pentecostal talk about God: Attempting to speak from experience

Pentecostals have their own ethos to bring to the theological table. Although they represent a diverse spectrum of beliefs, they share a basic preference for experience co-determining their theology, along with their interpretation of Scripture. Their hermeneutical viewpoint since the 1970s that links them with that of early Pentecostals allows them to regard the Bible as the inspired Word of God with authority for their lives although they qualify that statement by adding that encounters with God within the faith community in ways similar to those recorded in the Bible is conditional for understanding and interpreting biblical accounts of God and God’s faith community. It is proposed that Pentecostals need to develop a perspective on the all-inclusive difference made by their experience of God in all areas of their lives. Their experience of God through his Spirit shifts their loci communes and theological method. It is argued that Pentecostal theology should rethink every aspect of theological enterprise through the lens of the reality of God’s encounter with human beings as experienced in the faith community. In the last section, this is demonstrated in terms of one subject, of God as the object of theology.

Evans, Robert. Reception History, Tradition, and Biblical Interpretation: Gadamer and Jauss in Current Practice. Scriptural Traces: Critical Perspectives on the Reception and Influence of the Bible. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. 328 pp. $112.00 (cloth).

Evans, Robert. <i>Reception History, Tradition, and Biblical Interpretation: Gadamer and Jauss in Current Practice</i>. Scriptural Traces: Critical Perspectives on the Reception and Influence of the Bible. London: Bloomsbury, 2014. 328 pp. $112.00 (cloth).

The Distinction Between Law and Gospel as the Basis and Boundary of Theological Reflection by John D. Koch, Jr.

Reviewed by: The Distinction Between Law and Gospel as the Basis and Boundary of Theological Reflectionby John D. Koch, Jr. Joshua C. Miller The Distinction Between Law and Gospel as the Basis and Boundary of Theological Reflection. By John D. Koch, Jr.Tübingen: Mohr Siebeck, 2016. 228 pp. The distinction between law and gospel is not merely one locus amongst others in the Lutheran understanding of theology. Instead, it determines the entire enterprise of Lutheran theology. In this volume John D. Koch adopts this viewpoint, defends it from its detractors, and explores the heights and depths of what this distinction means for theological method, justification, sanctification, and eschatology, as well as for life itself. Koch begins with an assessment of the theological situation of the twenty-first century, in which there seems to be some consensus that the doctrine of justification by faith alone should be abandoned in the quest for organic ecumenical unity and the preservation of cultural Christianity (3–5). Against this, Koch argues that justification is the matter upon which the church will fall or stand, and that whether [End Page 450]the church falls or stands is dependent on a proper understanding of law and gospel (25). In advocating for a renewal of the Lutheran sense of law and gospel for the life of the church today, Koch draws from Gerhard Ebeling, Gerhard Forde, and Oswald Bayer. For Koch, a proper understanding of law and gospel is one that takes seriously the reality of what Luther labelled Anfechtungand how it affects the accused sinner. Anfechtungis not merely the attack on conscience that comes through the law. While it includes the law's work of convicting sinners of their sin and demonstrating the need for salvation, Anfechtungalso includes the believer's experience of the contradiction of the gospel. Following Bayer, Koch understands the experiences of evil and suffering in the world as how Anfechtungis experienced, namely, as the contradiction of the comfort that comes from justification by faith. Anfechtungincludes the work of the law, but its parameters are not limited to it (7–8). Following both Bayer and Forde, Koch takes a somewhat functional approach to the understanding of law and gospel. Koch argues that the law and the gospel should both be understood in terms of what they do. On the one hand, the law, through Anfechtung, makes sinners constantly aware of the reality of death and judgment. The gospel, on the other hand, does what it says; it justifies sinners before God and makes them new creatures. Koch responds to many critiques of the Lutheran view of law and gospel and of justification by faith alone, including those by Krister Stendahl, Karl Barth, Ernst Ratzinger, Robert Jenson, David Yeago, and the New Finnish School of Luther studies through its progeny in the United States, Paul Hinlicky and Christine Helmer. Koch carefully and charitably represents these views and then defends the Lutheran view through arguments that are both theologically and historically responsible. Koch's responses to Jenson and Yeago are especially important and warrant attention, as these theologians have consistently argued that the law and gospel theological method leads inexorably to antinomianism and Gnosticism (55–56, 184,197). Responding to these charges, Koch makes a detailed exploration into Forde and Bayer's shared understanding of sanctification as the continual re-creation of the new creature in Christ (158). Koch cites Forde's warning against antinomianism as "fake theology" (185–191) and Bayer's insistence that justification and creation must be [End Page 451]understood in the context of one another and that justification is a return to creation and creatureliness through the sacramental mediation of justification. Koch argues that the errors of antinomianism and Gnosticism are precluded in the views of Forde and Bayer because the law puts works righteousness to death and the gospel opens the sinner as a new creation to God and others (153–159). Koch organizes and articulates well the view of law and gospel he believes to be vital to the life of the church. While his account is theologically faithful and rich, it lacks commentary on a major figure in the law and...

The Origins of Pauline Theology: Paratexts and Priscillian of Avila'sCanons on the Letters of the Apostle Paul

Pauline theology is a well-established undertaking in modern New Testament studies, and yet it is almost entirely without precedent prior to the nineteenth century. This article explores the enterprise of Pauline theology by considering an important and overlooked exception to its otherwise exclusively modern provenance: Priscillian of Avila's fourth-centuryCanons on the Letters of the Apostle Paul. The key to Priscillian's dogmatic synthesis of Paul's thought was his innovative ‘versification’ of Paul's letters, which facilitated efficient citation and cross-referencing of epistolary data. This article uses Priscillian's literary creation to examine the intriguing correlation of technologies for ordering textual knowledge with the systematic abstraction of Pauline theology.

What Does Theology Have to Do With Evidence? Exploring Analytic Theology and Epistemology

The purpose of this essay is to reflect upon one specific aspect of the complex relationship between theology and philosophy, namely, the relationship between theological epistemology and analytic philosophical epistemology.1 More specifically, I want to think about the following question: why should analytic theologians be interested in analytic epistemology at all? While my essay does not contain an argument in any strict sense, it nevertheless puts forward a claim, or perhaps a kind of dilemma. It is this. On the one hand, it seems reasonable to maintain that analytic theology should not commit too strongly to one single approach to knowledge and justification coming from analytic epistemology. In other words, it seems plausible that in order to do analytic theology, one does not first have to develop a comprehensive account of knowledge and justified belief. On the other hand, analytic epistemological theories may be useful in defending the rationality of the theological enterprise against secular attempts to undermine it. We should not hope analytic theologians to completely dismiss analytic epistemology. In addition, analytic epistemology can surely help theologians to better analyze basic religious concepts, like belief, faith, and experience. I am interested in finding a middle way between grounding analytic theology on a secular epistemology and completely rejecting the project of defending the rationality of the theological project against the secular critic. I will begin by outlining the reasons for my interest in this issue and the positions that I want to avoid. I will then proceed to briefly examine one dominant trend in contemporary theology that eschews any kind of evidential considerations – a trend known as nonfoundationalism or postfoundationalism. Subsequent sections deal with the motivations behind analytic religious epistemology and the project of analytic theology. Finally, the last section goes through some recent texts and ideas that might be of use in formulating a position that would avoid the pitfalls identified in the previous sections.

Postcolonial Turn in Christian Theology of Religions: Some Critical Appraisals

This essay seeks to analyze the postcolonial method in the contemporary discourse of theology of religions. Kwok Pui-lan and Jenny Daggers will be of importance as the compass of this study, because their works are among the first contributions in postcolonial theology that linked to the field of theology of religions—especially that of Daggers, which is more comprehensive than Kwok’s essay. Kwok delivered a critique toward theology of religions as theological enterprise and proposed a postcolonial theology of difference as the alternative for the former. Daggers, who wrote almost a decade after Kwok, suggested a different direction and attempted a more comprehensive construction of the postcolonial theology of religions. Besides delineating Kwok’s and Daggers’s postcolonial thought, this essay will focus on critical analysis and evaluation of each theologian in order to underline their contributions to the current field of theology of religions. Lastly, it briefly sketches some directions for the construction of the postcolonial theology of religions based on both theologians’ contributions and the author’s experience as an Indonesian Christian.

On Analytic Theology

My primary aims in this paper are to give an overview of a recent movement which goes by the name of ‘analytic theology’, to locate that movement within the larger context of contemporary philosophy of religion, and to identify some of the weakness or objections that analytic theology will need to address moving forward. While I think that some of these objections have merit, I also think that the promise of analytic theology’s contribution to theology more broadly is, in my view, sufficiently robust that we should continue to engage in it as a theological enterprise (even if one among many).

What makes theology theology?

Informed by a dialogue between the disciplines of law and theology on legal and theological dogmatics, the article describes nine levels that constitute theological normativity and weight. The first three levels deal with integrating concepts of God, with the historical, cultural, and theological weight of the biblical canon, and with confessional documents and multi-loci dogmatics, respectively. These are central parts of the spectrum. The ecclesial, academic, and contextual-ethical responsibilities (integral to truth- and justice-seeking communities), the professional ethos and the institutional frameworks are equally important. Finally, the radiations of these six levels with individual piety and a shared living faith and the reverse shaping powers of practiced religious experience are all indispensable for the enterprise of theology.

Book Review: The Cambridge Companion to Black Theology

The Cambridge Companion to Black Edited by Dwight N. Hopkins and Edward P. Antonio. Cambridge Companions to Religion. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. xiv + 350 pp. $99.99 (cloth), $29.99 (paper).Do Black lives really matter? That is burning national question today. The follow-up retort that is also being raised is: Matter to whom? The names of Trayvon Martin, Michael Brown, Eric Gamer, Akai Gurley, and Tamir Rice have raised national conscience to such a level that there have been demonstrations and protests against racial injustice all over United States, and beyond, for several months. These are five Black men whose lives have been taken by white men, mainly police officers, without any judicial consequences. So, just as it is crucial to ask what it means to be Black, it is also very important to assess meaning and measure of Black religious experiences, cultural expressions, and socio-political expectations.The Cambridge Companion to Black Theology provides a valuable compendium of sources for a systematic attempt toward finding an authentic answer. It is valuable mainly since it offers theological reflections from a variety of contexts in which Black people world over continue to struggle for vital and viable alternatives to realities of status quo. Such realities include variations of social negation and cultural alienation, historical subjugation and exploitation, economic oppression, and industrial domination. These realities have traditionally been reinforced by conditions of persistent poverty, political dependence, and systemic injustice. This is why naming of those five Black men in previous paragraph has now become a national metaphor for what is patently wrong with our social order. Black people continue to be treated as the wretched of Earth, to use Franz Fanons famous phrase. I am still committed to proposition that Black people are only people on Earth whose claims to be fully human have not yet been universally acknowledged. Thus Companion introduces a range of historical, theological, thematic, and global insights that seek to bring reader into a fertile encounter with Theology from Other Side, rather than from Underside.The Companion is conveniently divided into three sections: Introduction, Themes in Black Theology, and Global Expressions of Black Theology. The introductory material lays out historical and theoretical antecedents of new theological enterprise, and seeks to align Black theological perspective with broader designs of liberation. The material links theological perspectives with modes of Black resistance and resilience in Africa and America, and draws some attention to encounters with some aspects of womanist theology, under guidance of one of its founders, Delores Williams. However, there is an absence of more pervasive forms of Black theological initiatives that have clearly demonstrated that such commonly held religious and spiritual notions have given rise to theologies of Protest (in striving to negate Negation), theologies of Affirmation (through song, spoken word, and mutual solidarity among people of color), and theologies of Transformation (through grassroots efforts to restore a sense of human dignity and social worth in organized groupings and other modes of civic advancement). This means that, far from classifying Black theology as a version of liberation theology, groundings of Black people s experiences throughout world have made it possible to generate modes of emancipatory proclamation and liberating praxis that have preceded any formulations of systematic canons, with intellectual surges and imaginative blessings of academic theologians.The traditional Christian doctrines, such as God, Christ, Holy Spirit, Sin, Theodicy, and Ecclesiology, are addressed in Black theological key. It is evident that contributors are obviously constrained to pay their respects to basic themes of classical theological formularies. …

La paideia como estructura fundamental del quehacer teológico en Gregorio de Nisa

This article seeks to give reason for the category paideia as a fundamental structure of the theological enterprise of Gregory of Nyssa. According to this purpose is made an approach to the concept of paideia own of the Greeks and subsequently notes how the bishop of Nyssa appropriated that category by configuring the Christian paideia, appealing to examples of his work De Vita Moysis.

Magisterial Authority, Heresy and Lay Questioning in Early Fifteenth-Century Oxford

A group of Latin-English macaronic sermons from the early fifteenth century collected together in Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Bodley 649 offers suggestive insights into contemporary perceptions of Oxford University and of the compromised authority of its theological magisterium in the aftermath of the Wycliffite controversies in which the university had been fundamentally implicated. This essay argues that the sermons, in the epistemic ambiguity and indecision which lie at their heart, are characteristic of English “orthodox” discourses at this time which sought to negotiate the troubled relationship between unregulated lay questioning and academic theological enterprise.