Theological Vocabulary Research Articles

The Soul as Seen through Evangelical Eyes, Part I: Mental Health Professionals and ‘the Soul’

Theologians generally avoid the word soul, because of an anti-Plato battle that occurred between 1926 and 1958, leaving the word discredited. Searching for a substitute, most evangelical theologians use the word spirit instead, meaning the anthropological spirit. This article proposes that the word soul cannot be omitted from the theological vocabulary without leaving a vacuum. While soul and spirit are synonyms in the Bible, they are not complete synonyms. Soul emphasizes the earthly, carnal, and uniquely individual aspects of the inner person. When that word is omitted, theologians have a semantic blind-spot with regard to human psychology. It provides no theological vocabulary for discussing the relationship between psychology and theology. “Psyche” is the Greek word for soul, and secular psychotherapists routinely treat the soul, but not the spirit. The word ‘soul’ refers to the inner or subjective person in the natural state (whether saved or unsaved).

Alcoholism, AA and a Bit of Theology

The vocabulary and concepts of medicine, theology, and psychology have all been used to define and discuss alcoholism. Using medical concepts, we discuss the differences between illness and disease, especially in terms of spontaneous recovery. Using theological concepts, we delineate AA's ideas of God regarding its belief system. In terms of psychological constructs an attempt is made to compare a Higher Power to transitional object theory. The authors propose that AA's suggestions act as potential introjects. Moreover, the Higher Power is Thompson's "Hound of Heaven."

Psychoanalysis and theology: Two dialectics

In the vocabulary of psychoanalysis, "health" means something roughly correlative to "salvation" in the vocabulary of theology. Both health and salvation assume some manner of change from a previous pathological or doomed state. Against this background this paper seeks to delineate two different possible models of change: One in which realityper se is changed as opposed to one in which theperception of reality is changed. In theology, the former can be represented by Paul and the latter by John. In psychoanalysis, Freud represented each point of view in his structural and topographical paradigms respectively. In contemporary psychoanalytical therapy, Otto Kernberg represents the former and Jacques Lacan the latter.

How is the Concept of Sin related to the Concept of Moral Wrongdoing?

The word ‘sin’ is unlikely to be found in the index of a book on moral philosophy. It belongs to the vocabulary of theology. But the serious student of both subjects is bound to wonder how the concept of sin is to be related to the topics that interest moral philosophers. The problem is complicated by the evident fact that ‘sin’ is what W. B. Gallie has called an ‘essentially contested concept’ and that unanimity is as rare among moral philosophers as it is among theologians. It is not a matter, therefore, of applying an agreed philosophical method to a clearly defined theological concept, but of looking for a way of thinking about sin which is theologically defensible and which can approve itself to a reasonably sympathetic moral philosopher.

The Consistent Calvinism of the New Divinity Movement

HE theology of New England Congregationalism during the last third of the eighteenth century is nothing if not confusing. The pages of pamphlets and periodicals, memoirs and chronicles, are spotted with a rash of bewildering terms: New Divinity, Consistent Calvinism, Old Calvinism, Moderate Calvinism, Liberalism, Hopkinsianism. Historians' efforts to clear up the confusion have sometimes compounded it. Most scholars agree to divide Congregationalism three ways, but after separating ministers into New Divinity, Old Calvinist, and Liberal factions, they begin to disagree. They dispute about the doctrines, the strength, and even the composition of the three groups. There is perhaps least disagreement about the Liberals. Most writers accept the description of these men as proto-Unitarians clustered in the vicinity of Boston and Harvard. This party of broad-minded clergy had gradually drifted away from Puritan orthodoxy. Their Christian humanism, together with their high regard for man's reason and ability, led them to an Arminian emphasis on the role of moral duties in the winning of salvation. Still, because the Liberals continued to employ the traditional theological vocabulary, they are not always easy to distinguish from their more orthodox brethren.' The Old Calvinists present a more difficult case. These ministers clung to the federal or covenant theology, and they upheld the Westminster Assembly's confession and catechisms as their standards of doctrinal truth. Unlike the Liberals, the Old Calvinists were Calvinists, not cryptoArminians. Indeed, several of their most energetic spokesmen had been zealous New Lights during the Great Awakening. Viewing themselves as children of the Puritans, they were quick to reproach any who preached a new divinity. Still, it was no easy matter to remain a Puritan in the eighteenth century.

Sociology and Theology: Alliance and Conflict

Introduction: Of Two Minds, John Orme Mills 1. The Limits of Displacement: two disciplines face each other, Eileen Barker 2. Displacements and Reinstatements: the relations between sociology and theology considered in their changing intellectual context, Christopher Harris. Responses by Mary Hesse, Fergus Kerr, Nicholas Lash 3. The Sociological Mode and the Theological Vocabulary, David Martin 4. Theodicy and Social Theory: an exploration of the limits of collaboration between sociologist and theologian, W.S.F. Pickering 5. The Rational System of Beliefs, W. Donald Hudson 6. From Sociology to Theology, Robin Gill 7. The Sociology of Roman Catholic Theology, Gregory Baum 8. God, Man and Media: on a problem arising when theologians speak of the modern world, John Orme Mills 9. Relativizing the Relativizers: a theologian's assessment of the role of sociological explanation of religious phenomena and theology today, Timothy Radcliffe 10. Theology and Sociology: what point is there in keeping the distinction?, Antoine Lion Epilogue: Many Voices, Robert Towler Select Bibliography Index of Authors, Biblical Names and Sources

Lefèvre d'Étaples and the Magdalen

What did sixteenth-century Christians disagree about before they disagreed about Luther? We turn to pre-Reformation controversies expecting to find a theological vocabulary very different from what was soon to come, but at the same time a statement of some of the problems within Christianity which the Reformation set out to solve.Is it important to know whether the Saint Mary Magdalen whom the liturgy celebrates was really one person or a composite of several women, mentioned at different places in the gospels? The question would raise little debate today, but in 1518 and 1519 it inspired more than a dozen tracts, most of them by competent scholars, and in the early 1520s another four.

The Tradition of Christendom and the Second Vatican Council

'Tradition’ is one of the most problematic words in the vocabulary of theology. At one end of the theological spectrum it serves as the name for a norm whereby to judge any practice or belief, a standard endowed with authority related – in a way which it is not my concern to define more closely here – to that of the scriptural revelation. At the other end of the spectrum it can approximate to customs, practices, beliefs which are carried by the Church through her history as the debris of the past, a dead weight which may have lost meaning and relevance but is built into the Church's sociological structure. Thus a pope of the eleventh century, Gregory VII, who always liked to stress that his own reforming ideals were only to bring the Church back to the precepts of the holy fathers and the ancient canons, could nevertheless reply to his opponents, who invoked time-hallowed customs to justify their opposition, by remarking in words themselves borrowed from a long tradition – that Christ had said he was the truth, not that he was tradition. In general our talk of ‘tradition’ moves on a level a little lower than the angels of authoritative norm and above the beasts of outworn custom. It is this peculiarity that gives such evocative power to the language, to take a recent example, of Mrs Rosemary Haughton. in one of the more thoughtful contributions to the symposium Objections to Roman Catholicism.

Some Problems in John Milton's Theological Vocabulary

Throughout the history of western Christianity, a major stumbling block has been agreement upon the definition of certain terms. Milton and his critics have shared in the difficulty of communication which lack of a common terminology has caused. Nowhere is this more evident than in his discussion of the Son of God in the Christian Doctrine, where his employment of “substance,” “subsistence,” “essence,” and “hypostasis” has confused students who were attempting to understand the complex meanings which lie back of these words. Milton has often not followed the interpretations of these words usually held in Christianity; rather, he has adopted meanings which were very early associated with them but which lost currency centuries ago, even though they have never been completely forgotten.

A Patristic Greek Lexicon

This dictionary is one of the most comprehensive works ever compiled on the theological and ecclesiastical vocabulary of the Greek Christian authors, including material from Clement of Rome to Theodore of Studium. While intended to be used in conjunction with Liddell Scott-Jones Greek-English Lexicon, it contains a very large number of words used by Christian authors not included in Liddell Scott-Jones.

The Catholic Critics of Karl Barth In Outline and Analysis

In 1932 R. Grosche, editor of the newly founded magazine Catholica, attributed to Karl Barth the chief honour of ‘having made the Catholic-Protestant controversy again possible in the form of theological discussion’. For the Catholic critics of Barth the full possibilities of this discussion were first realised in 1951 in a brilliant work by Urs von Balthasar, whose central thesis was rated by Barth himself as ‘incomparably more powerful than that of most of the books which have clustered around me’ (C.D. IV. 1, 768). Now, in his latest part-volume, Barth expresses his gratitude to three other Catholic authors of excellent books on his theology, one each in German, French, and Italian, all showing a ‘thorough familiarity with the text’, and even more important, ‘an earnest wish to comprehend and a real comprehension’ (K.D. IV.3.1, viii). Hans Küng's Rechtfertigung reconciling the Catholic doctrine of justification with Barth's own, and raising a storm of interconfessional debate, has since become virtually a part of the continental theological vocabulary. Henri Bouillard's three-volume 900-page analysis, surpassing even von Balthasar's research in objectivity and breadth, and stimulating sheer envy for its French-reading public, appears to be the introduction to Barth's theology for the foreseeable future. And Emmanuele Riverso worthily represents even Italy's traditionally conservative Catholicism with a lengthy critique ranking with most Protestant attempts to date. Among the multitude of questions which this whole remarkable phenomenon raises for the Protestant spectator, several are basic: how does catholicism see Barth's dogmatics, what does it say to what it sees, and why should it to a greater extent than Protestantism be so obviously interested in seeing anything at all there?

Religion and the Intellect

Can a man think and be religious at the same time? To some the question may seem preposterous, but certainly not to those who are really trying to think. The effort to get intellectual harmony between our faith and the things which we have come to believe to be true is one which always tests the capacities of a creative age. In religion a little thinking is a dangerous thing. What the world needs just now is the leadership of men who think things through, who are not captured by formulas and epigrams, and who do not think they have solved spiritual questions when they have produced a new theological vocabulary.