Theological Reference Research Articles

Absolute Factuality, Common Sense, and Theological Reference in the Thought of Franz Rosenzweig

Since its publication, Franz Rosenzweig's magnum opus,The Star of Redemption, has remained a challenge to its readers and a source of wildly conflicting interpretations. It should be a matter of great consternation to Rosenzweig's readers that, shortly after his publication of theStar, he came to identify the work with common sense. This article traces the emergence of common sense within Rosenzweig's thought and undertakes a critical analysis of his use of the term. In contrast to other efforts to address this topic, I argue that Rosenzweig's belated appeal to common sense is a useful heuristic tool for understanding his account of God, the divine-human relationship, and the power and limits of theological language in theStar.

THE RECEPTION OF THE PHILOSOPHICAL TRADITION AS A WAY OF FORMING AMERICAN PERSONALISM: THE POST-SECULAR VIEW

The aim of the article is to define the way of expounding the authenticity of the experience of self-cognition opened by the personalist philosophy of the USA on the horizon of receiving the philosophical tradition established by B. P. Bowne to lay the epistemological foundations for overcoming the impersonalist modes of thought in the philosophical-humanitarian space of North America. At the emergent stage of the historical-philosophical process defined as its post-secular period the topicality of studying American personalism in the indicated aspect of its genesis is predetermined by developing the personalistic inspiration of post-non-classical philosophy into renewing the interaction of philosophical and theological discourses initial for the personalist thought and intended to reunite rationality with its spiritual sources in the course of reflecting the personal mode of being realized on the ground of theism. The further reflection of the meta-ontology of the personhood uncovered by the Scripture and expounded by patristic trinitology presupposes the retrospection of the trajectory of moving towards the Supernatural Revelation paved in the late nineteenth and the first half of twentieth centuries by the attempts of personalizing the ontology, in particular by the “personalized” ontological constructions made in the USA. The methodology of the research is based upon realizing the meta-ontological character of the problem of the personality revealed in the midst of the twentieth century by the prominent Orthodox theologian and philosopher-personalist V. N. Lossky. Taking into consideration the Biblical background of American personalism and its genetic connections with the denominations of Protestantism developed on the North American continent and the branching Protestant theology, the author focuses on both proper philosophical and theological reference points of this personalistic current of philosophizing in the historical-philosophical reconstruction of its genesis oriented towards the meta-ontological dimension of the personality. The scientific novelty of the study consists in initiating the reflection of the way of defining the inner experience of the self as the all-sufficient criterion of cognition which was paved by the personalist thought of the USA in the course of revising the classical rationalist models of the subjectivity and broke the ground for constructing “the personal world” in the space of rational consciousness formed in North America. On the base of analyzing Bowne's revision of Kant's transcendental idealism aimed at the explication of the immediacy of self-experience the author reveals that such argumentation for its cognitive primacy transforms into affirming the mediation of the inner appeal of the human personality to living God by the outer interpersonal experience of rational cognition. The revealed regression to the rationally mediated relationship of the created person with Creator is connected with the restriction of the research for “personal beginning of all speculation” which resulted in the personal metaphysics of B. P. Bowne by the rationalistic tools of the personal self-reflection. The study proves that it was predetermined by the philosopher's confessional belonging to the Methodist Church detached from patristic Trinitology and Christology forming the arsenal of trinitarian meta-logic intended to expound the personhood as the ultimate principle of being. Conclusions define the resource of Bowne's idea of the “personal interpretation of experience” which inspired the subsequent “personalized” ontological constructions in the personalistic domain established on the North American continent. They form the dialogic space of the personalist philosophy of the USA predetermining the accumulation of its potential in the interaction with other philosophical currents. Manifesting itself as the personalistic inspiration of the emerging trends of thought this tendency predicts the focus of the further historical-philosophical research of American personalism.

Ferdinand Ebner: na początku było słowo

In the article the author presents a few events, from the past and today, the actual and literary stories, related to the use of language and proposes their dialogical interpretation. The basis for the interpretation is Ferdinand Ebner’s thought, and particularly his concept of the word as a force enabling the development of the human being. In the entire text there are clear theological references, first of all to Saint John’s Gospel and its idea of Logos. The author points out that any encounter between human persons contains in itself a certain spiritual potential, which may be actualized only thanks to love stemming from God. Thus the word reveals its profound religious and therapeutic power.

Thinking with God: Cognition, Religion, and Literature: Introduction to Special Issue of Literature and Theology

In Act One, Scene Seven of Macbeth, the troubled hero finds himself checked and chastened by the imagined spectre of ‘pity, like a naked new-born babe, / Striding the blast, or Heaven’s cherubim, horsed/ Upon the sightless couriers of the air’ (I.vii.21-24).1 The image draws on Baroque emblems of allegorical Pity as well as eschatological angels blowing the trumpets of doom. The metamorphic movement of the image across a range of theological references borne by a mix of media dramatises the roiling consciousness of Macbeth as he considers the action before him. The naked babe, as part of the force field of Macbeth’s ambition and anxiety, both cringes and admonishes, a cloudy curl in the speech’s restless movement towards action. Shakespeare’s play as a whole can be read as a phenomenological exploration of religion and cognition. Key terms relevant to Macbeth and developed in this Special Issue include...

Supersession or Subsession? Exodus Typology, the Christian Eucharist and the Jewish Passover Meal

AbstractContemporary Christian construals of the Eucharist, both in doctrine and in practice, generally tend to subordinate, de-emphasise or omit theological reference to the Jewish Passover meal. And yet the key New Testament texts in which the Eucharist's institution is variously narrated – the very texts and institution allegedly ‘remembered’ in eucharistic rites – are virtually unintelligible apart from Passover. Thus, at the heart of Christian doctrine and practical life sits a particular theological problem: namely, precisely how to relate the distinctively Jewish character of the Eucharist's origins as narrated in the New Testament to the distinctively Christian character of eucharistic doctrine and liturgy. Drawing on two Jewish thinkers, Michael Fishbane and Yair Zakovitch, in this article I offer one model for understanding the Eucharist–Passover relationship in particular, and the Christian–Jewish relationship generally, as fundamentally typological, performative and ‘subsessionist’. That is, I propose a subsessionist (as opposed to supersessionist) typological understanding of the Eucharist as a Christian rendition of Passover, at once distinct from its Jewish counterparts today and utterly dependent on the ancient Israelite festival for its intelligibility and force. From Fishbane, I draw the idea that throughout the Hebrew Bible, the exodus narrative provides a crucial interpretative key applicable to both prior and anticipated redemptions. From Zakovitch, I draw the idea that the ubiquity of exodus typology in Hebrew scripture may function to create an impression of periodic repetition in salvation history, in effect reassuring Israel that future deliverance will conform to the essential patterns of the prestigious past. The typology at play here, then, so far from being a triumphalist ‘prophecy-fulfilment’ arrangement in which the ‘old’ is valuable only insofar as it serves as a signpost pointing to the ‘new’, is rather a ‘paradigm-rendition’ typology in which the new performance is clarified and authenticated precisely insofar as it corresponds to the old, exalted original. At stake here, I contend, is not only a more fruitful framework for conceiving the relationship between Eucharist and Passover (or indeed between Christianity and Judaism), but also a crucial theological strategy for resisting what amounts to ade factoMarcionism in contemporary Christian communities.

Reference Ethics: Theological Librarianship in Conversation with ALA Reference Ethics Guidelines

This particular article will look at one ethical concern that is likely to be very familiar to most theological reference librarians. This question is what the theological reference librarian's ethical responsibilities are when the American Library Association's Code of Ethics seems to conflict with an institution's expectations for an employee of that institution. In order to adequately solve this question, the article will first summarize the basic elements of the American Library Association's Code of Ethics that relate to the reference interview. Next, the special nature of theological reference librarianship will be discussed. Third, the Association of Theological Schools accreditation guidelines will be examined to determine the relationships that theological librarians have to their religious institutions. Fourth, in light of the theological librarian reference ethics that emerge from the proposed investigation, possible ethical solutions will be suggested. The article will conclude that the article's research question is actually a false question, not because theological librarians have not raised it or because it is not worth considering, but because the American Library Association's Code of Ethics and the Association of Theological Schools accreditation standards expect the same thing from their librarians.

An Introduction to Christian Theology (review)

Reviewed by: An Introduction to Christian Theology Matthew W.I. Dunn Richard J. Plantinga, Thomas R. Thompson, and Matthew D. Lundberg. An Introduction to Christian Theology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xx + 634. Paper, $29.99. ISBN 978-0-521-69037-9. The authors are religion professors at Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Michigan, which was formally associated with the Christian Reformed Church. They view their work as “an introduction and an invitation to Christian theology” (xiii). [End Page 333] The book’s first part (47–415) treats several key themes: revelation and “God talk,” the nature of God, creation, humankind and sin, theodicy, Jesus Christ, the Holy Spirit, salvation, the Church and mission, and eschatology. Each chapter follows a routine course from a consideration of the biblical data to a discussion of relevant historical issues. The authors give their view of how best to actualize the doctrine for today as well as its practical relevance to contemporary problems and questions, from the world’s ecological devastation (176–179) to social justice (275–276) to Christianity’s encounter with religious plurality (361–372). The second part (417–574) offers a historical survey of Christian theology through “five significant . . . epochs”: Patristic, Medieval, “Reformational,” Modern, and Contemporary. The “big names” are present, like Augustine and Luther, as are other theologians of interest to the authors, like Richard of St. Victor and Jürgen Moltmann. Nearly every chapter ends with a brief bibliography, and very helpful tables and figures accompany every part of the text. The book also contains a theological glossary (575–604), a general bibliography (605–625), and an index (626–634). What I found surprisingly lacking, however, was a catalogue of biblical references used in the book. The authors write from the perspective—and hence the preconception—of Evangelical Protestant Christianity. As one might expect, then, Luther and Calvin are frequent theological reference points, as is Karl Barth. Still, the authors should be credited for the numerous instances in which they include the insights of other thinkers who do not fit the Evangelical mould, like Thomas Aquinas, Karl Rahner, and N.T. Wright. Even the Bible’s Deuterocanon finds a place in their discussions (e.g., see 149 and 403). As a Byzantine Catholic, I truly appreciated their nods—albeit few and far between—to Eastern Christian theology. I should also mention the creative way the authors wove into the text references to literature (Emily Dickinson’s poetry), music (Bach’s “Mass in B Minor”), and film (the humorous dialogue on the Trinity from Nuns on the Run). I felt that the authors’ historical survey was an unnecessary appendage. The authors themselves seem to admit as much when they say that their survey “can be read profit-ably and independently before, during, or after” the book’s other sections. They further explain that it is meant to reinforce—or “mother” (?)—the historical material covered in the doctrinal sections of the book (xv). Nonetheless I wondered why the historical material alone needs reinforcement, and whether or not the material could have been used to enrich the doctrinal sections. For each chapter, the authors outline “the biblical basis for the teaching” followed by the teaching’s development and their own systematic reflection (xv, emphasis in original; see also 25). However, although the authors emphasize the biblical base of their theology, I found their treatment of Scripture generally superficial and in some places almost nonexistent (e.g., see chapter 8 on theodicy). The authors display their biases significantly when they use the phrase proof text to describe their methodology (115). Finally, while the authors intend to provide an introductory text, their language is certainly not introductory. Consider, for instance, the following passage: During the intertestamental period, amid the ebb and flow of messianic expectations, there grew a nostalgia for the prophetic Spirit of Israel’s former days, an activity which now appeared quiescent. Along with the rise of apocalypticism there emerged a more detailed angelology and demonology. . . . In Hellenistic (diaspora) Judaism . . . there developed a virtual identification of God’s Spirit with the divine wisdom immanent in creation . . . [etc.] (287–288). Many college students would have difficulty understanding much of this without a...

A Matter of Some Interest

This essay review of Margaret Atwood's Payback centers on the observation that the book does not dwell on the unnatural face of interest and finance. In this era of financialization, debt has been thoroughly uncoupled from the concept of payback. The least valuable debt is the one that is promptly repaid. It is this aspect of debt—the interest, not the principal—that has attracted the richest tradition of social condemnation. As stable forms of production and exchange were replaced by international arbitrage, the link between debt and sorcery became evident to observers around the world. More profoundly, Atwood's widely shared commonsense impression that consumer debt is a measure of self-indulgence does not hold up empirically. It turns out that our unprecedented levels of household indebtedness were overwhelmingly a function of nondiscretionary spending. Even as Americans owed one hundred percent of GDP in individual debt in 2008, the real Faustian bargain was not a “enjoy now, pay later” scheme for “glitzy, short-term junk.” The truth is much scarier, and points toward a different set of cultural and theological references than the ones Atwood investigates. The dividing line between solvency and insolvency, it turns out, is not consumption but reproduction: the most certain route to financial disaster is having a child.

Librarians, Publishers, and Theological Reference Resources: A Way Forward

Librarians, Publishers, and Theological Reference Resources: A Way Forward

‘The most beautiful sound I ever heard’: Liturgy, Religious Imagery and Symbolism in West Side Story

Liturgy is one of the most obvious ways in which faith is enacted or produced. An analogy might be drawn between liturgical celebration and musical theatre: structurally similar, both performance media include dialogue and song and embrace movement or dance. While recent research on the musical has tended to focus on the musicological, the sociological and the historical, this study suggests that the evolving form of the twentieth-century musical reveals not only cultural influences, but many liturgical and theological references, both visual and auditory, intentional or not. With 732 performances to its credit, the original production of West Side Story was undoubtedly a highly regarded and popular hit on Broadway. The collaboration not only marks a creative high point in the history of the genre of the musical, at a time when that art form was enjoying its golden age, but the show is also reflective of the ongoing sacralisation of the Broadway musical, a phenomenon which reached a distinct climax in this particular production. By evaluating the content of this seminal musical, this study shows how the form of West Side Story exhibits liturgical traits, suggesting that such an interpretation might be applied to musical theatre in general.

Souled Out: Reclaiming Faith & Politics after the Religious Right (review)

David J. O’Brien E . J. Dionne, Jr., is among our most thoughtful commentators on American politics and Souled Out is his unusually sophisticated examination of the role of religion in American public life. Historians should love Dionne. His earlier books located American political controversies in an historical context extending from the Progressive Movement through the New Deal and the watershed of the sixties to the rise of conservatism across all sectors. He helped us understand “Why Americans Hate Politics” and, at a low point for progressives, he explained “Why They (We) Only Look Dead.” In books, columns, magazine articles and frequent TV and radio appearances, Dionne offers news and commentary that actually is “fair and balanced.” Yet he makes no secret of his views, stating early in this book that Americans have “had enough” of political religion that is “excessively dogmatic, partisan and ideological.” More than most media pundits, Dionne is a genuine political intellectual. A Rhodes Scholar, Georgetown professor and Brookings Fellow, Dionne is one of the few contemporaries who deserve a place with such classic newspaper columnists as Walter Lippman, Max Lerner, and James Reston. Dionne is also a wellinformed and well-connected Catholic, open about his faith, respectful of church authority, engaged with Catholic ideas and interested in his fellow Catholics. Perhaps as a result, Souled Out, almost alone in the growing library of books about religion and American politics, provides accurate information about the political ideas and activities of American Catholics and draws on Catholic sources to support a more comprehensive and constructive understanding of faith and politics. The first reason to read this fine book is to get a summary of the surveys, monographs and memoirs exploding under the heading of religion and American politics. Dionne has read it all. He summarizes religious surveys and voting data, he draws on scholarship and journalism, and he talks to a great many people. His sources include liberals, conservatives, and moderates, and his treatment of people and ideas is a model of civility. Readers of U.S. Catholic Historian will be particularly interested in Souled Out because Dionne shares our interests. He references Michael Kazin on William Jennings Bryan and John McGreevy on Catholics and liberals, and Michael Novak and John Paul II on markets and their limits. He cites John A. Ryan and John Courtney Murray, S.J., and he knows his Reinhold Neibuhr, whose commitment to justice and realism about power he finds helpful “after the Religious Right.” So Catholic historians will be pleased, but they might find his Catholic history a little 115 stale and ask him to drop by Catholic University for an update on recent historical scholarship that might expand even further his imagination about religion and American politics. There are many important points made in this book. Dionne thinks “the era of the religious Right is over,” a wider range of social gospel concerns are awakening among evangelicals, constructive proposals are replacing polarized debates about abortion, and leaders are paying attention to the religious and political center, where the vast majority of Americans reside. The future will not belong to the left but to new configurations where secular liberals are more respectful of religion, committed religious people are more aware of the disciplines of pluralism, and concern for the common good replaces the self-righteousness of recent culture wars. Dionne is a hopeful but not a perfect guide: he has always been stronger on domestic affairs than foreign policy, he is a bit passive about political history, as if violence and corruption had little to do with winners and losers, and at times he seems almost too calm, wondering why people are so upset. But Souled Out is the best book to date (and there are a lot of them) on this important subject of religion and recent American politics. Still, hoping to spark further conversation, I would like to offer three comments: one about American politics, another about American Catholics, and a third about America itself. On American politics: Dionne needs to think a bit harder about power. This may seem odd when his central theological reference is Neibuhr, famous for his insertion of power into the moral reflections of...

Speaking of the Church in NCE2

ABSTRACT Reviewers have criticized NCE2 for failing to provide the thorough updating promised in the pre-publication literature. This article explores whether the editorial approach criticized in the reviews might compromise the value of NCE2 as a theological reference. Noting the significance of ecclesiological discussions in the period following Vatican II, this article focuses attention on the progress of two articles-“Church II, Theology of” and “Ecclesiology”-from NCE1, through the supplementary volumes, up to NCE2. It then argues that the decision to cobble these entries together from earlier materials with only limited updating has inappropriately silenced important voices in post-conciliar ecclesiology. This diminishes the value of these articles.

The Figino, or On the Purpose of Painting:' Art Theory in the Late Renaissance

Of the many treatises written in Italy during the Counter-Reformation, none is more illustrative of the intellectual fermentation of the period than Comanini's work on the purpose of painting, Il Figino overo del fine della Pittura (1591). Although the importance of Il Figino has long been recognized, the text has remained largely inaccessible to many scholars throughout the world. This first complete English translation will make the work available to those readers for the first time. In Il Figino, Comanini addresses all of the most hotly debated aesthetic issues of the time, drawing on an array of classical, medieval and Renaissance sources, including Plato, Aristotle, Horace, Mazzoni, Tasso and Paleotti. The editor and translator provide copious notes which clarify Comanini's aesthetic and theological references, as well as a lucid introduction that places the issues and debates in context. Comanini's impressive erudition makes his treatise an excellent barometer of the state of scholarship in the Counter-Reformation era. This translation is a long-overdue addition to the field of Renaissance studies.

Postliberale teologie as teologiese raamwerk vir die kerk se korporatiewe identiteit

Postliberal theology as theological reference for the church’s corporate identityThis article seeks to show the importance of culture and symbols, as in the business sector in terms of corporate culture and image, so too mutatis mutandis in the church. The post liberal theology would be a basis of such an argument. A short exposition of the theology of George Lindbeck is given in order to indicate that his categories should be interpreted dynamically which means that the one-way direction of influence in the cultural-linguistic model gets dialectical, once this relation has been established. In a time of identity crises for established churches, corporate symbols are of utmost importance. Therefore, this process should be managed and exploited. Recognition of the particular has its place in the post liberal theology without abolishing ecumenism or, in the words of Lindbeck, “reconciliation without capitulation”.

La position des apologistes conciliateurs

Christian apologetics in the second half of the 18th Century, far from being rigid as has been claimed, was influenced by history and a fervent desire to adapt to the modern world. Protestants like Formey appealed to reasonable Christianity, rejecting asceticism and mysticism, while Catholics like abbé Yvon, both apologist and Encyclopaedist, represent another category. Others moved the threshhold of ideological toleration by recognising the philosophical contributions of Locke and Montesquieu (abbé Baudisson, Essai sur l'union du christianisme avec la philosophie, 1787). Finally another thread, even more open to new ideas, claimed, by a sort of backhanded legitimation without any theological reference, that the Christian religion was the best way to achieve happiness in this world (père Lamourette). On the eve of the Revolution, the opposition was mainly between Christian conciliators and radical apologists.

Sodomy and rehtiu minne in Heinrich von Veldeke's Eneit

In Heinrich von Veldeke's Eneit, Eneas's future mother-in-law casts a serious slur on the hero's character by accusing him of homosexual practices. 1 This allegation comes as a surprise for the modern reader, not only because it appears to be entirely unjustified, given the events of the narrative, but also because it runs counter to expectations of genre: in Ivliddle High German, self-consciously courtly texts do not normally incorporate explicit references to sodomy.2 In Latin, the topic is clearly not taboo, as one may deduce, not only from the numerous references in theological reference works, canon law and penitentials,3 but also from the existence of more elaborate literary discourse, ranging

Der Gottesstaat als Vedute. Jan van Eycks "Madonna des Kanzlers Nicolas Rolin"

This essay makes the first ever attempt at linking the form and content of Jan van Eyck's Madonna of the Chancellor Rolin (Paris, Musee du Louvre) to a fundamental and uniform iconographical concept. The landscape and scenic bipartition of the painting clearly evidences St. Augustine's De civitate Dei as being its central theological reference. The essay examines its influence on all pictorial and compositional elements of the painting. A particularly fruitful aspect in this respect is the important role which St. Augustine's writings played at the court of the Duke of Burgundy in the 15th century. The author identifies St. Augustine's historical theology, and above all his doctrine of grace, as determining aspects of the Louvre painting.

Major theological reference resources

Major theological reference resources

Major theological reference resources

Major theological reference resources

Major theological reference resources

Major theological reference resources