Theological Work Research Articles

Economics of Faith: Reforming Poor Relief in Early Modern Europe by Esther Chung-Kim

<i>Economics of Faith: Reforming Poor Relief in Early Modern Europe</i> by Esther Chung-Kim

Japanese Perspectives on the Death of Christ: A Study in Contextualized Christology by How Chuang Chua

Reviewed by: Japanese Perspectives on the Death of Christ: A Study in Contextualized Christology by How Chuang Chua Andrew Ronnevik Japanese Perspectives on the Death of Christ: A Study in Contextualized Christology. By How Chuang Chua. Oxford: Regnum Books International, 2021. x + 308 pp. Only about 1% of Japan's population are Christians, but this book shows how members of the small community have made significant theological contributions. The author, How Chuang Chua [End Page 103] (1959–2015), was a Singaporean evangelical theologian and missionary to Japan. A revised PhD dissertation from Trinity Evangelical Divinity School, his book examines the lives and writings of three twentieth-century Japanese Christians—Kazo Kitamori, Shusaku Endo, and Kosuke Koyama—in relation to Christ's death. It is an exemplary work of contextual theology, drawing attention to how the word of the cross has been received in distinctive ways in Japan. The three opening chapters orient readers to biblical and Western theological interpretations of the cross, approaches to contextual theology, and the history of Japanese Christianity. More engaging are the following three chapters. Each of these is devoted to one Japanese-Christian writer and engages insightfully with both biography and texts. Chapter four presents the theologian Kitamori (1916–1998), best known for his 1946 Theology of the Pain of God. Chua carefully describes Kitamori's notion of divine pain, the result of God encountering the sinner with wrath and love. Lutheran readers will be interested to see how Luther's theology of the cross influenced Kitamori's thought, along with personal, cultural, and biblical factors. Chua is appreciative of how seriously Kitamori takes human sin and divine wrath, but he rightly criticizes Kitamori for overreaching in the claim that pain is an ontological attribute of God. Chapter five takes up the Catholic novelist Endo (1923–1996), famous for his Silence (1966). Chua shows how Endo, attuned to dissonances between East and West, believed that Christ could never be at home in the "mudswamp" of Japan as a triumphant (Western) savior but only as the crucified, weak, humiliated companion of the suffering. While Chua is sympathetic to Endo's effort to indigenize Christ, he criticizes Endo's pluralistic-syncretistic trajectory, emphasis on suffering over sin, and failure to discuss divine deliverance. Chapter six turns to the globetrotting missiologist Koyama (1929–2009), widely hailed for his Waterbuffalo Theology (1974). More than Kitamori and Endo, Koyama considered the death of Christ in concrete relation to history, culture, politics, and ethics. Koyama, Chua suggests, communicated the cross primarily with the missiological concern of cultivating the "crucified mind" of Christ in diverse individuals and communities. Although Chua worries that [End Page 104] Koyama, out of concern for violence, distances himself too far from the satisfaction theory of atonement, he generally affirms Koyama's legacy, especially his attention to context and neighbor, the centrality of sin, and the eschatological movement of history. A summary chapter and epilogue on missiological matters conclude the book. These provide thoughtful synthesis and deeper attention to issues previously addressed more briefly, such as divine impassibility, the cross and violence, theological language, and modes of theological work. There is much to commend in this book. First, better than many, Chua strikes a healthy balance between the centrality of Scripture, the need for contextualization, and the critical appreciation of the Western tradition. Second, Chua's methodology is effective in its use of different kinds of writings and in its blending of texts and biography. Third, shining through his scholarly work are Chua's pastoral and missiological commitments. While appreciative of the book, I also note two questions. First, might Chua have tightened his project by focusing more consistently on issues of the cross? Sometimes he addresses more topics than necessary, blurring the focus on the death of Christ. Second, does Chua exaggerate the difference between sin and suffering? Some distinction is appropriate, but I wish Chua had probed more thoroughly their relation. This book deserves a wide readership, especially among those interested in the global church and Christology. Because of its density, it is best suited for upper-level college and seminary courses. Andrew Ronnevik Baylor University Waco, Texas Copyright © 2023 Johns Hopkins University Press and Lutheran...

Mosaic Tiles: Comparative Theological Hermeneutics and Christian-Jewish Dialogue About the Land

the purpose of this article is to outline an approach for religious bodies to dialogue between Christians and Jews within the North American context. This approach contains some hermeneutic keys of contemporary comparative theological work in the academic field. However, it is suitable for the practical work done within the settings of Jewish-Christian dialogue. To achieve this purpose, this article will unfold in three steps. First, it outlines what I would call "mosaic tiles" of ideologies around Israel that do not translate well into the ideologies of other dialogue partners. The second step involves outlining some key characteristics of the hermeneutics of comparative theology, especially its emphasis on textuality, hermeneutic openness, and humility. In the third and final step, I engage these three hermeneutic characteristics by applying them to the topic of the Land in Christian-Jewish dialogue.

QUANTUM THEOLOGY BEYOND COPENHAGEN: TAKING FUNDAMENTALISM LITERALLY

AbstractTheological engagement with quantum physics has, to this day, been dominated by the Copenhagen interpretation. However, philosophers and physicists working in the “quantum foundations” field have largely abandoned the Copenhagen view on account of what is widely seen as its troublesome antirealism. Other metaphysical approaches have come to the fore instead, which often take a strongly realist flavor, such as de Broglie‐Bohm, or Everett's “Many‐Worlds” interpretation. In the spirit of recent quantum foundations work, this article introduces a collection of studies aimed at taking quantum theology “beyond Copenhagen.” The present article advocates a commitment to “quantum fundamentalism,” which could resolve some of the enduring ontological problems faced by existing theological work with quantum mechanics, especially in discussions of quantum special divine action. Taking quantum fundamentalism literally would mean a departure from the Copenhagen interpretation, and the article suggests the need for a new research program to lay the groundwork in the natural theology of quantum foundations.

Gender Identity: To Infinity and Beyond

Recent work in systematic and moral theology has sought to recover a sense of the normativity of eschatology, claiming that it is a central task of moral reasoning to stretch itself to imagine our final state of affairs to guide our actions in our current times and places. At the same time, there is a growing theological consensus that gender will not persist into the eschaton. It seems, then, that eschatological normativity cannot be applied to our moral reasoning about gender. This article will attempt to resolve this incompatibility by arguing for the eschatological presence of gender. In favor of those claiming that we need eschatologically-informed ethics, especially with respect to gender, I will show that the arguments provided for gender's eschatological absence face difficulties that they cannot overcome, chief of which is the disjunction between creation and redemption they introduce.

Doing the Work of Comparative Theology: A Primer for Christians

Sebuah resensi untuk buku Doing the Work of Comparative Theology.

How to Make Analytic Science-Engaged Theology an ASSET

This paper explores the relationship between analytic theology and science-engaged theology through a historical lens, connecting contemporary disagreements between analytic metaphysicians and philosophers of science to a disagreement about philosophical method between Carnap and Quine. After discussing philosophical issues of meaning and verification in early positivism, the paper goes on to suggest that the analytic-synthetic distinction underlying much work in analytic theology is difficult to maintain when engaging with empirical methods of knowledge production such as science. To move forward, then, analytic theologians who wish to pursue science-engaged theology need a constructive methodology that embraces a blurring of the analytic-synthetic distinction. A rough sketch of one such research program, analytic-synthetic science-engaged theology, is offered as a potential ASSET for systematic theologians who wish to engage with natural and human sciences.

Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

Cambridge Companion to Hildegard of Bingen

Theologia Cambrensis: Protestant Religion and Theology in Wales, Volume 2: The Long Nineteenth Century, 1760–1900

Theologia Cambrensis: Protestant Religion and Theology in Wales, Volume 2: The Long Nineteenth Century, 1760–1900

‘Christliche und Abendländische Kultur’? Readings of Augustine and Ecclesiastes in the White Rose Pamphlets

This article examines the use of references to specifically Christian texts in the White Rose pamphlets. It situates them in their original context, and argues that, whilst the pamphlets of the White Rose are not framed as theological works, the intended audience includes those who are familiar with such a cultural perspective, as is the case with references to other literary and philosophical works. The paper also examines the opinions of the philologist Richard Harder on the pamphlets in his analysis undertaken for the Gestapo, suggesting that in Harder they found the kind of reader at which they were aimed.

The Thirteenth-Century Animal Turn: Medieval and Twenty-First Century Perspectives Thinking about Animals in Thirteenth-Century Paris: Theologians on the Boundary between Humans and Animals

<i>The Thirteenth-Century Animal Turn: Medieval and Twenty-First Century Perspectives</i> <i>Thinking about Animals in Thirteenth-Century Paris: Theologians on the Boundary between Humans and Animals</i>

VERBALIZATION OF THE CONCEPT “FAITH” IN RUSSIAN, KYRGYZ AND ENGLISH

This work is devoted to the description of the concept of belief in the languages and cultures of the Russian, Kyrgyz and English peoples. The problem of faith is a deep and serious topic, which is the subject of many works in theology and philosophy. We will focus only on those points that are important for the purposes of this study. The concept of faith is studied in linguistic and linguocultural aspects. The analysis of lexical, syntactic, and rhetorical means of describing faith in everyday and religious discourses is carried out. The etymology of words with the semantics of faith is described, a linguistic commentary is given, connection of faith with other mental and spiritual concepts and categories is traced. The article presents a comparison of the meanings of the lexemes “faith”, “ishenim”, “faith” and “belief” in these three cultures, which can serve as a preparatory stage for further conceptual analysis.

Queer Mormon Theology: An Introduction

Queer Mormon Theology: An Introduction

At the Intersection of uṣūl al-fiqh and kalām: The Commentary Tradition on Ṣadr al-Sharīʿa al-Thānī’s al-Muqaddimāt al-arbaʿ

Ṣadr al-Sharīʿa al-Thānī al-Maḥbūbī (d. 747/1346) was the last major Māturīdī theologian of Transoxania. As he left no work of rational theology (kalām) proper, one of the chief sources of his theological thought is his book on legal theory, al-Tawḍīḥ fī ḥall ghawāmiḍ al-Tanqīḥ. Because the work served as a prominent reference for both legal theory and rational theol­ogy, an extensive commentary tradition on it emerged as it was transmitted from Transoxania to South Asia, Anatolia, and the Arab world. A distinctive subfield of this commentary tradition consisted of glosses devoted exclusively to one specific section of al-Tawḍīḥ. Revolving around the nature of good and evil, and intimately linked to the question of human free will, this part of Ṣadr al-Sharīʿa’s text came to be treated as a separate work, commonly referred to as al-Muqaddimāt al-arbaʿ (“The four pro­legomena”). Due to its role as a highly sophisticated refutation of late Ashʿarī doctrine on human volition, al-Muqaddimāt al-arbaʿ eventually developed into a prime source for later Māturīdī scholars in their discussion of human volition and related topics.

ЛІНГВІСТИЧНІ СХОЛІЇ ДО УКРАЇНСЬКОМОВНОГО ПЕРЕКЛАДУ 4–5 ПСАЛМІВ

The Psalter is the most famous collection of religious poetry in the world, which is actively used during religious services by representatives of all Abrahamic religions. In view of this, the constant work of theologians and philologists on the interpretation and translation of psalms into different languages and for different intended audiences is going on. Despite the emergence of isolated attempts to translate the Psalter into the modern Ukrainian literary language, the study of biblical poetry from the point of view of the relationship between the Hebrew and Greek texts, as well as their adequate reproduction in the Ukrainian language, taking into account the active centuries-long use of the Slavic translation, remains relevant for the domestic scientific and theological community. Pointing out a practical way to solve this problem, the author proposes his own linguistic scholia to the Masoretic, Greek and Slavic texts of the 4-5 Psalms and also offers a version of their translation. The original texts from Biblia Hebraica Stuttgartensia and Septuaginta were used for the work, as well as the commonly used text of the Psalter in the Church Slavonic language. As for Ukrainian translators, the researcher focuses on the liturgical Psalter in the Kyiv translation of 1920, the text of which was edited in 1947 by professors of the Ukrainian Theological Academy in Munich, and the Book of Psalms from the translation department of the Ukrainian Bible Society in 2016: this text claims to be academic and is the latest linguistic word on this topic in Ukrainian biblical studies. The material presented in the article will be useful not only for the Ukrainian specialists in the biblical studies but also for philologists-translators, literary scholars – all those who are interested in hermeneutics and exegesis of the biblical texts.

From the Editor

From the Editor Uwe Michael Lang Lord, I love you"—these were reported to be the last words of Pope Benedict XVI before he died on December 31, 2022.1 The words echo the threefold profession of faith the Apostle Peter made to the Risen Christ in John 21. Both Joseph Ratzinger's warm personal faith, which he had treasured since his childhood in Catholic Bavaria, and his profound theological work were animated by his friendship with Christ. It is no easy task to render justice to the immense legacy of Benedict XVI, whose lifework stands out in so many ways. In the first place, we must be truly grateful for his loving service to God and the Church, as a theologian and pastor. Having had the grace of knowing Joseph Ratzinger personally, I have always found it painful to see how a man of such gentleness, humility, and openness in listening to others was often met with anticipated hostility from the wider public, and with thinly veiled obstruction from some even inside the Catholic Church. So many assaults on him were personal, manifestly unjust, full of verbal abuse and intended to distract from the real reasons why the opinion makers of our time intensely disliked him. Joseph Ratzinger was a Catholic thinker who explained the faith in a luminous and attractive way and intelligently questioned the assumptions of the relativism that has dominated the public square in the Western world for some time and is now showing increasingly totalitarian features. Throughout his long life and ministry that led him to the See of Peter, he strove to put God first and ensure that Christ was at the [End Page 1] center of the Church's mission. Since his early years of formation, he found in the New Testament "the soul of all theology."2 As cardinal and pope, he challenged the hubris of historical-critical exegesis and called for a rediscovery of what it means to read the Bible in the tradition of the Church. In the three volumes of his work Jesus of Nazareth, written during his pontificate, Benedict XVI invited us to join his search for the face of Christ, which he has now completed. Even though his university career focused on fundamental and dogmatic theology, Joseph Ratzinger considered the liturgy central to his academic and pastoral work and hailed it as the "living element" of theology, "without which it would necessarily shrivel up."3 Divine worship brings us into the right relationship with God and with one another, and its true meaning and relevance far exceed the actual liturgical celebration. As Joseph Ratzinger concludes from his reading of the Exodus narrative: the worship to which the people of Israel—and, by extension, all the nations—are called "embraces the ordering of the whole of human life."4 Joseph Ratzinger lived and worked at a time when the form and expression of the Church's faith in the sacred liturgy had become a highly controversial topic. As a theologian and bishop, he did not shrink from entering this contested arena with admirable lucidity. He was convinced that infelicitous choices have been made in the actual implementation of the sound principles of the Second Vatican Council's Constitution on the Sacred Liturgy. With his election to the See of Peter, Benedict XVI found himself in a position to shape the future of the Catholic liturgy, a position he could only approach with misgivings, because he strongly held that genuine liturgical renewal does not happen by decrees and instructions. Instead, he [End Page 2] intended to create favorable conditions and open perspectives for an "organic" development of the liturgy that would avoid the discontinuity that had done so much damage to Catholic ritual in the post-conciliar period. The Society for Catholic Liturgy is indebted in a particular way to the liturgical vision of Joseph Ratzinger/Benedict XVI. Authentic liturgical renewal needs to be grounded in scholarship that is academically rigorous, faithful to the Church's perennial teaching, and guided by charity. The various activities of the Society, above all its annual conference and its journal Antiphon, promote such scholarship in the service of liturgical formation. It is rewarding...

Imitating God and Familiar Identity: An Exploration in Developmental Psychology, Theology, and Ecclesial IdentityMarried Priests in the Catholic Church, Adam A. J.Deville (ed.), University of Notre Dame Press, 2021 (ISBN 978‐0‐268‐20010‐7), XXVI + 350 pp., pb $35Made in the Image of God: Being Human in the Christian Tradition, MichaelFuller, and DavidJasper (eds), Sacristy Press, 2021 (ISBN 978‐1‐78959‐170‐5), x + 282

AbstractThe nature of familial identity is central to a growing number of theological works. The authors of the volumes here each represent a different set of issues, disciplines, and perspectives. The discussions, ironically, center around family. Made in the Image of God gives the readers a series of reflections on diverse theological topics oscillating around the image and identity. Forming Resilient Children is unlike Made in the Image of God in that it is not strictly speaking a theological reflection on diverse issues, but a work of developmental psychology focusing on the nature of the child and the familial context for the child. Married Priests in the Catholic Church offers the reader a series of ecclesial engagements on the topic of the vocation of priesthood as either married or celibate. Overlapping with the previous two volumes in content by touching on identity, the image of God, and the nature of creaturely relations to God, Married Priests is, in one sense, a sustained reflection on the meaning of familial and organic identity (as an image of God) to the Church.

De svenska biblarna som aldrig blev av

It has often been assumed that the late eighteenth century in Sweden never produced much of interest on the exegetical or theological plane. This was the period in which the Bible, a hotly debated text in Enlightenment Europe, was famously never translated in any accepted version and the philological, academic and theological work that was done during the Gustavian era has been underappreciated in later historiography. Picking up on the notion of a ‘religious Enlightenment,’ this article analyzes three biblical translation projects, the official Bible commission of 1773, the private translations of Bishop Johan Adam Tingstadius and the private Jewish translation of Genesis 49 by David Josephsson and Marcus Maure. Through a comparison of the translation work of Genesis 49 in these three projects this article argues for the usefulness of Bible reception in understanding the late eighteenth-century world. Philology, new historical knowledge and altered epistemic perspectives meant that the Bible, as the most central of classical and religious texts, could no longer be translated in the old 1541 tradition and that any translation of it would show the perspectives and ideologies of the translators and their intended audience, Jewish or Christian.

ON THE ISSUE OF CYRILLIC MANUSCRIPTS IN CHUVASHIA: THE OLD BELIEVER MANUSCRIPT COLLECTION OF THE SECOND HALF OF THE XIX CENTURY “KATOLOKH” FROM THE COLLECTION OF A.G. BERMAN

This work is devoted to the paleographic and source-study description of the Cyrillic Old Believer manuscript collection of the XIX century, stored in the collection of A.G. Berman. The compiler of the collection named it “Katolokh”. The presence of Soviet documents inside the collection, used by former owners of the handwritten monument, enables us to determine that it comes from Semenovsky uyezd of Nizhny Novgorod governorate, which has long been known for Old Believers’ small monasteries.&#x0D; &#x0D; An important dating element that makes it possible to determine the time of the manuscript creation are the paper blocks used. The stamps on the paper of the collection under study enable to establish the chronological framework of paper production in 1868–1874. A more accurate dating was made due to the presence of financial and accounting documentation woven into the collection.&#x0D; &#x0D; Upon a detailed study of the entire collection under study, it was revealed that the accounting documents presented in the collection relate to the period of economic activity of Nizhny Novgorod Old Believers-salt merchants, who introduced trade with one of the major salt suppliers to the market of the Russian Empire – Countess Varvara Petrovna Shakhovskaya-Shuvalova-Polye, Princess Butero-Rodali (1796–1870).&#x0D; &#x0D; The collection includes excerpts from theological works, monuments of the canon law, works of the Old Russian literature, Old Believers’ writings of the XVII – XIX centuries. The content of “Katolokh” is divided into several thematic blocks, in accordance with the ideological tasks that the compiler solved.&#x0D; &#x0D; Based on paleographic, textual and historical analysis, it is concluded that the collection called “Katolokh” was created at the very end of the 60s – the first half of the 70s of the XIX century in the midst of the Old Believers who did not reject the priesthood. It is very likely that these Old Believers had close ties between the co-religionists of Perm and Nizhny Novgorod governorates. The collection reflects the state of external and internal Old Believers polemics, when dogmatic differences with the Bespopovtsy were already fully realized, but the positions between the Belokrinitsky hierarchy, the chapel and Beglopoptsy agreement on the issue of receiving clergy from the New Believer church did not completely diverge yet and were in a state of acute controversy and discussion.

A Public Convergence: Embracing the Congregation as a Place of Difference

Abstract Communitarians and public theologians alike tend to discuss the church’s identity as a clearly demarcated community separated from the world or public life, each defining publicness as something that is found outside the church. It is a more likely argument that publicness is already present in the congregation as a place of difference: it is possible for the particulars of the community to interact, engage, and mutually benefit the various social realms present in and through the congregants. This public identity renders engagement with the public an unavoidable reality and provides an opportunity for the congregation to become a fruitful space for the work of public theology by embracing this reality through the development of a public posture of openness, accessibility, and accountability, which would improve both the church’s internal ministry and its ministry in the world beyond its community.