Theological Vision Research Articles

A Theological Exploration: Nonviolence as Intersectional Praxis

This article offers a theological vision of how nonviolence contributes to Catholic social teaching, and offers a crosscutting, intersectional praxis related to two destructive waves in the US: the public health crisis of COVID-19 and systemic racism. First, this article will describe some basic intersections of these two waves, and then draw on a theological description of nonviolence to analyze their intersectionality. Finally, this article will illustrate how nonviolence offers a praxis for a more sustainable transformation.

Reading The Bible, Ecologically: Re-Imagining Our Theological Hermeneutics

Commencing with a personal prelude to ecological biblical hermeneutics and inspired by a prophetic call of Pope Francis, the present paper outlines how in times of profound crisis, the need to choose what counts is urgent. With recourse to the same model of crisis and choice, a brief overview of some of the salient eco-biblical proposals is presented which then sets the stage for the author’s eco-hermeneutical reading of Isaiah 34-35, which brings to the fore the prophetic portrayal wherein otherwise marginal/ized earth-companions meaningfully show similarity with the cherished Israelite traditions and theological visions.

Review of Nazianzuslu Grigorius ve Kutsal Ruh’un Tanrılığı Meselesi, by Elif Tokay

Dr. Elif Tokay’s recent book- Gregory of Nazianzus and the Issue of the Divinity of the Holy Spirit- is an important milestone in the study of Christian theology. This book is the first study of Gregory of Nazianzus ever to be written and published in Turkish. It is an insightful, accessible, and thorough examination of Gregory’s profound theological vision, the central argument of which is that the triune nature of God is revealed through God’s plan of salvation for humanity. Because his Trinitarian theology was fundamental to the development of Christian doctrine in general, Gregory’s importance in the history of Christianity cannot be overstated. In addition, his spiritual vision is of particular importance in Eastern Orthodox Christianity. Gregory’s spiritual vision argues that humanity is created for the purpose of union with its Creator, and that the ascetic, contemplative, liturgical, and moral labor of the human individual all work in free cooperation with God’s saving plan. This theological anthropology is foundational to Eastern Orthodox spiritual teaching. Gregory’s works have for centuries been among the most widely read in the entire Eastern Orthodox tradition, and his theology of theosis (which Tokay discusses in detail) has played a key role in Eastern Orthodox religious practice and identity. Tokay’s analysis demonstrates that Gregory’s theology is best understood as a synthesis of doctrine and spirituality, where God’s saving role in history is the key to understanding God’s triune nature as disclosed to humanity in revelation.

Spiritual Theology: The Contribution of Edith Stein

The author of the article studies the spirituality of Edith Stein. He presents Edith Stein’s contribution to the methodology of spiritual theology, her anthropological and theological vision, her evolution of the religious experience, the life of prayer and call to mysticism. Edith Stein carried out research which today would be regarded as being interdisciplinary. Her reflections have a huge influence on the methodology of the theology of spirituality. The spirituality of the Cross which Stein writes about in compliance with the classic masters, nowadays may be an adjustment to the incarnational spirituality, in her overly optimistic view on the usage of creatures and taking for granted the spiritual value of suffering.

Flesh & blood: reproductive loss as a site of theological imagination (or doing theology with blood in your knickers)

ABSTRACT The experience of reproductive loss has long been shrouded in silences. Theological silence has been one among many. In this article, I examine what it might mean to take the embodied experience of miscarriage as a site for theological reimagining. What does theology look like from this perspective? This question lends itself to the growing body of contextual theologies that recognise there is no neutral space from which to do theology and offers a rich and complex kind of theological discourse. Grounded in embodied experience, recognition of liminality, and rejection of individualism, this paper demonstrates that the miscarrying body offers profound insights into theological discourse and presents an opportunity for deep reflection on the kinds of theologies our bodies are capable of imagining. From out of this theological reimaging, I offer some examples of spiritual practice, prayers, and liturgies for use by and with those who have experienced reproductive loss.

Review of Both Sides of the Wardrobe: C. S. Lewis, Theological Imagination, and Everyday Discipleship

Review of Both Sides of the Wardrobe: C. S. Lewis, Theological Imagination, and Everyday Discipleship

Jesus of the gaps: The evangelistic use of biblical reflexes in the Qur’an

Does it help to start with the Jesus of the Qur’an when doing Muslim evangelism? This missiological approach has been, and continues to be, prevalent. In this article we examine the theological legitimacy of appealing to biblical reflexes in the Qur’an for evangelism. Is such an approach biblically legitimate and practically helpful? We first argue, from Acts 17, that the Bible tacitly endorses the evangelistic tactic of making appeals to truth statements in alien religious texts to connect with hearers’ theological imaginations. In doing so, we propose an evangelistic alien text appeal principle. Second, we adopt Qur’an 4:171 as a case study, arguing that some Christological reflexes hinder, and others help, Muslims imagine the biblical Jesus. We conclude that only those Qur’anic Christological reflexes that are imprecise—Jesus of the gaps—are biblically legitimate and helpful for evangelism.

Fostering the Global Common Good: The Relevance of Catholic Social Teaching to Public Health Debates

Given the scope and intensity of its impact, the COVID-19 pandemic proves instructive as an example of the shortfall in regnant legal and policy approaches to global health issues. Secular discussions of such issues tend to rely on a perspective best described as “policy realism”, with current international arrangements and institutions viewed as the acceptable context for future reform. Much of recent Catholic social teaching (hereinafter, CST) has challenged such realism in fundamental ways. While CST is often dismissed as merely prophetic in its tone, I defend its salience by assessing several aspects of its distinctive perspective: (1) the broad theological and anthropological vision reflected in the Catholic framework of basic norms, especially the norm of solidarity; (2) issues that arise in identifying different modes of moral discourse in modern CST; and (3) an effort to resolve such apparent tensions that unifies a distinctively Catholic approach to global health even as it suggests a series of “talking points” between the Catholic theological vision and various secular philosophical and political perspectives.

The End of the Law? Law, Theology, and Neuroscience

The End of the Law? Law, Theology, and Neuroscience

Philo of Alexandria and the Epistle to the Hebrews on the Concept of the Spiritualization of the Cult

Abstract The Epistle to the Hebrews contains one of the most unique Greek lexicology and syntax of all the New Testament writings. Behind syntax, however, there lies a very profound theological vision on topics such as Christ, Temple, holiness, perseverance and salvation. Studying Hebrews against the background of Graeco-Roman culture, the source that most contemporary scholars mention as being closest to the world of Hebrews in this context is Philo of Alexandria. Not only on philological grounds, but also in matters of methods of interpreting the Old Testament cult and in theology, Hebrews and Philo share a very common background. Analyzing the Epistle to the Hebrews comparatively, we are bound to ask whether or not comparsions such as these are warranted. In the following study we will state the state of the problem and then will examine the two sources that seem to have served as a source of inspiration for the author of Hebrews: the Old Testament and Philo of Alexandria. We will focus exclusively on the issues of the method of allegory and the spiritualization/reinterpretation of Old Testament cultic entities, since both Philo and Hebrews are characterized by these concerns. In essence, we will want to know who or what served as the most plausible source of inspiration for the author of Hebrews in the particular area of the reinterpretation of the Old Testament cult.

The Parish Communion Movement: The Body’s Discipleship

AbstractThis essay explores the corporate and social dimensions of discipleship by examining the theological vision of the Parish Communion movement of the last century. It outlines what the Parish Communion movement sought to achieve liturgically and how that was undergirded by its underlying ecclesiology. Elements of the theology underpinning the movement are examined, including its corporate Body theology and its social theology. How these themes contribute to contemporary elaborations of discipleship are then explored, including a reflection on the legacy of the movement in the context of the Covid-19 pandemic.

Thinking tool for evolutionary creation

Theological thinking is hard. It takes various forms depending on its object of reflection, and needs to be doctrinally informed, contextually appropriate and methodologically consistent. Theological thinking about evolutionary creation meets all said conditions and restrictions on some sort of a larger-than-usual scale. I, thus, introduce a thinking tool – intuition pump, as Daniel Dennett calls it – that can help us theologically contemplate evolutionary creation. This approach aims to put together and to combine evolution and creation within the context of the structure and form of Dennett’s proposed methodology and thought experiments using at one instance Gödel’s incompleteness theorems. This intuition pump has its implications and effects in other theological domains (Trinity, Christology and Sacramentology) but its natural context lies within theology of creation. I will start by presenting Dennett’s heterophenomenological method for scientific research of consciousness, stretching our theological imagination by using it. This thinking tool enables us to see this world as God’s heterophenomenological world. At the same time, it enables us to recognize and confirm intrinsic properties or essences in nature and it warrant thinking about historicity of Adam and Eve.

THE EARLY CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY OF PERSONHOOD

The notion of personhood has become increasingly dominating modern theological discourse from the nineteenth century onwards. However, it has also become an object of critique by the historians of theology as we cannot find any kind of developed concept of personhood in the early Christian sources. So it was dismissed as a projection of our modern cultural concerns on the historical texts of the Church fathers. Although this critique does justice to the historical distance between our culture and the culture of late antiquity, this article attempts to demonstrate the presence of the theological vision of the human being as embodying individual free will as a gift of God. Certainly, the notion of free will was not a Christian invention as it had a long philosophical tradition in the ancient world beginning from Plato and Aristotle to the Stoics and Plotinus. However, the early Christian theologians were the ones who gave to the notion of markedly universal character, insofar as free will was not considered by them to be a matter of ascetic cultivation solely available to those trained in philosophy. Yet its theological provenance also shaped its structure in a paradoxical way: being the gift of God human freedom appears to depend on God, but this condition does not impose limitations on it but, on the contrary, enables it. The awareness of one’s freedom as a gift of the Other leads toward the formation of what might be designated as a “eucharistic self“. The exploration of the broad implications of this concept can open new avenues for envisioning society without conflict arising from competition between individuals and also help us find solutions to the ecological crisis

Salvation through Temptation: Maximus the Confessor and Thomas Aquinas on Christ’s Victory over the Devil by Benjamin E. Heidgerken

Reviewed by: Salvation through Temptation: Maximus the Confessor and Thomas Aquinas on Christ’s Victory over the Devil by Benjamin E. Heidgerken Andrew J. Summerson Salvation through Temptation: Maximus the Confessor and Thomas Aquinas on Christ’s Victory over the Devil. By BENJAMIN E. HEIDGERKEN. Foreword by PAUL M. BLOWERS. Washington, D.C.: The Catholic University of America Press, 2021. Pp. xiv + 316. $75.00 (hardcover). ISBN: 978-0-8132-3412-0. Benjamin Heidgerken’s first monograph draws attention to the dense cosmology of the premodern world. The universe consists of parts both visible and invisible. The invisible world may not be susceptible to inquiry vis-à-vis the physical sciences. Nevertheless, the invisible world is the subject of intense scrutiny by early and medieval Christian authors. Even the demons, who are invisible but by no means imperceptible, behave according to a certain logic. [End Page 157] Locating Maximus and Aquinas within this “thicker universe” is a reminder to theologians who, rather than wrestling within these premodern conditions, pass over the talk of angels and demons as superfluous. If theologians do not take this material seriously, then they disqualify themselves from shaping theological imaginations by refusing to use their own. We need not be surprised why the worse, and not the better, occupies this void. Heidgerken offers a constructive contribution to fill this gap with his present work, which is a revision of his doctoral dissertation. His research falls in line with one recent study of Maximus (though absent from his bibliography), John Gavin’s They Are Like the Angels in the Heavens: Angelology and Anthropology in the Thought of Maximus the Confessor (Rome: Institutum patristicum Augustinianum, 2009). For Gavin, angels serve as a foil to clarify Maximus’s theological anthropology. In a similar way, Heidgerken uses demonology to elucidate Maximus’s soteriology. Heidgerken argues that demonic temptation resolves issues in scholarly treatments of Maximus. Christ “is like us in all things save sin” (Heb 4:15). Yet, in his mature description of Christ’s human will, Maximus claims Christ lacks a “gnomic will,” that is, a deliberating function between alternatives, resulting from and conditioned by human fallenness. The author proposes that demonic temptation—an externalized, personified force—allows Christ to experience temptation’s bites. This view avoids positing imperfections within Christ’s psyche, while reverencing the fullness of human experience. One would be satisfied with a complete inventory of the Confessor’s demonology in relation to his Chris-tology. Yet, Heidgerken’s book goes beyond the seventh century to compare Maximus with Thomas Aquinas. In his Introduction, Heidgerken inserts himself among Marcus Plested, Matthew Briel, and Christiaan Kappes, who have explored the intellectual exchange between Greek and Latin thinkers in the medieval period and have revised in important ways the hackneyed labels of “Eastern” and “Western” through their assiduous historical studies. Heidgerken follows the work of Antoine Levy’s Le créé et l’incréé, which compares Maximus and Aquinas in order to arbitrate the Palamite controversy. This comparative approach is not without pitfalls. Both figures are saturated with secondary literature and any influence of Maximus on Aquinas is heavily mediated—as Heidgerken is aware—through Aquinas’s medieval precursors John of Damascus, Peter Lombard, and Alexander of Hales. Chapter 1 treats Maximus’s sources for his anthropology and Christology. Heidgerken identifies fourth-century bishop Nemesius of Emesa’s On Human Nature as a key influence on Maximus’s development of the will and the role of choice. I will say more on this later. He turns to Gregory of Nyssa’s On the Soul and Resurrection, where Nyssa posits that affective behavior is natural to the human condition, and choice results from human sinfulness. Heidgerken then outlines Origen’s and Evagrius’s teachings on demonic temptation. He shifts to Gregory of Nyssa and Gregory of Nazianzus to sketch the Christological picture Maximus inherits, pointing out the different ways they describe Christ’s relationship to unfallen and fallen human existence. [End Page 158] Chapter 2 discusses Maximus’s anthropology with special reference to human temptation. Heidgerken describes Adam’s original state as good, containing the logos of immutability. However, Adam’s tropos or manner of being was susceptible to motion and...

ПРИРОДА І МЕТА ТЕОЛОГІЇ В ІНТЕРПРЕТАЦІЇ РЕЖИНАЛЬДА ҐАРРІҐУ-ЛАҐРАНЖА

As one of the leading Thomist thinkers of the 20th century Catholic Church, the Dominican theologian and philosopher Réginald Garrigou- Lagrange was for a long time in the shadow of his great contemporaries, namely, Jacques Maritain and Étienne Gilson. In this study, that was primarily intended to draw the attention of Ukrainian academic community to this extraordinary figure, the author offers a concise analysis of R. Garrigou-Lagrange's views on the fundamental principles of authentic scholastic theologizing and the far-reaching strategic goals of any theological reflection. The article's author begins with a focus on the Catholic theologian's emphasis on the insufficiency of purely "cabinet" theological research, which instead should always have a powerful potential for further practical applications in Church's everyday life. According to Garrigou-Lagrange, the basic value of theology is grounded in its function to normalize or recognize as false this or that spiritual experience acquired by a practicing Christian. This function of theology allows for avoiding two main threats – subjectivism and particularism, the essence of which is examined in the research. In addition, the article contains an analysis of the Dominican's ideas regarding the arguments that can be used to justify the approach to theology as an academic discipline. The essence of Garrigou-Lagrange's rendering of the concept of God's revelation as a set of those truths that are not anti-rational but consistent with human reason is also revealed by the author in the proposed text. Finally, the article concludes that the uniqueness of Garrigou-Lagrange's theological vision lies in his ability to maintain a nuanced balance between (1) uncompromising devotion to rigid traditionalist Thomism and (2) openness to mystical empiricism, i.e. to the practical spiritual experience of dogmas proclaimed by the Church but without slipping into subjective individualistic spiritualism.

“If the Gospel We Preach Disregards Human Rights, I Would Rather not Preach This Gospel”: Towards a Lived Theology of Hong Kong Churches

Both pro-establishment Christians, who support ‘obeying the authority’ (Romans 13), and pro-democracy Christians, who participated in the 2014–20 protests, want what is best for Hong Kong and truest to their Christian faith, but they understand those aims differently. The former believe social stability is a way to create space for Christian faith to flourish, while the latter judge that we need to break the current unjust system for Christian faith to begin flourishing. After conducting interviews with lay Christians, we found that both sides can struggle to communicate their vision for faithful Christian political theology. One reason, which we explore here, is that the key theo-political concepts at issue—namely, protest, democracy, and rights—derive from the historical context of post-Christendom societies rooted in the Western Enlightenment tradition. Hong Kong is adjacent to that tradition, but not at home in it. Using the method of ‘narrative portraiture,’ we endeavor to explore their respective theologies. This method uses the participants’ own stories, so that we, as researchers, are not speaking for Hong Kong Christians, but instead illuminating their own ideas. Presenting these lived theologies can remind us, as church leaders, that our congregations are a source of God's revelation to us, even when they may lack the terms to communicate effectively, which is why we should not forget to listen to the “average Jane.”

Sharing divine ideas: the theological trajectory of Mark A. McIntosh

The late Rev. Mark A. McIntosh, PhD, was well-known as a spiritual theologian and a scholar of divine ideas tradition. In his roughly thirty-year career as a priest and professor of systematic, historical, and spiritual theology, McIntosh remained focused on articulating his developing theological vision. In this retrospective of McIntosh’s theological writings, I organize McIntosh’s theological trajectory into three main stages focused on communicating the mutually nourishing unity of spirituality and theology, attuning Christian laity and theologians to the mystical dimension of doctrine and, finally, to enriching this dimension via a recovery of the divine ideas tradition. Throughout these stages, McIntosh hoped to instill his readers with a robust understanding and a deep love for all creation, a disposition he saw as increasingly urgent in the church and in the world.

A white theologian learning how to fall upward

As a theologian coming from Europe, a ‘postcolonial import’ into South Africa, it is my white privilege in particular that continues to queer my understanding of a social revolution on which our future, as a people, may depend. In this article, I seek to turn my personal experience of grappling with my whiteness into the source of my reflection. Drawing inspiration from fallism – a recent student movement that inscribes itself into a larger decolonial ‘struggle against the globalised system of racist capitalism’ – I ponder what it could mean, in the South African context, for whiteness to fall upward (Rohr). Here, the metaphor of ‘falling upward’ as a kenosis of whiteness is considered specifically with regard to a white theologian’s (my own) attempt to open spaces that could be filled with blackness.Contribution: This auto-ethnographic essay inscribes itself into a transdisciplinary study of theology and race from both socio-cultural and religiospiritual perspectives. The author’s personal reflections, inspired by his own engagement with the fallist narratives and his ever-evolving attitude towards the blackness–whiteness binary, as experienced in the South African social and academic contexts, are shared as a means to crack open the societal and theological (notably Christian) imagination, both of which appear to suffer from a serious crisis.

The Eternal Plan of the Father and the Immaculate Conception of the Mother: The Foundations of an Objective Mariology in the Theology of Blessed John Duns Scotus

This article explores selected aspects of the Mariology of Blessed John Duns Scotus, a medieval Franciscan philosopher and theologian. Even though the Subtle Doctor did not develop a theological synthesis as mature as that of St. Thomas Aquinas, his observations continue to provide a relevant source of inspiration for a more in-depth look at Franciscan protological and soteriological concepts. Duns Scotus earned his place in the history of theology as a eulogist of the mystery of the Incarnation and defender of the truth about the Immaculate Conception. In fact, what he had accomplished laid the necessary foundation for the dogmatic ruling on that matter in 1854. The article begins by presenting the scholar’s view of the relation between creation and Redemption from the standpoint of Christ’s perfect mediation. The Marian Doctor was an advocate of emphasizing the objectivity of Redemption, although he himself stopped short of the “threshold” of the mystery of the Father with respect to the Mother of the Son of God, the most perfect Mediator—also for the Virgin Mary. In the end, the Subtle Doctor did not draw all the possible conclusions from his theological vision of creation and salvation history. Next, the article outlines the perspective of God’s eternal plan. Blessed John Duns Scotus’s theology reveals a vision of history in which everything is directed toward the fulfilment of God’s eternal plan: the very plan of which St. Paul wrote very forcefully yet subtly and to which St. John Paul II often referred. The interpretation of that plan is the foundation of an “objective Mariology”. Finally, the author addresses the question of the freedom of both the Creator and His creation from the perspective of the Creator’s plan and in accordance with the Marian Doctor’s assumptions. An analysis of Duns Scotus’s Mariology reveals its depth and innovative character and, at the same time, certain limitations which—in his time—were mentally unsurmountable.

Stewart, Dustin. Futures of Enlightenment Poetry

Stewart, Dustin. <i>Futures of Enlightenment Poetry</i>