DISPOSABLE BODIES,DISABLED MINDS,AND CHRISTIAN HOPE: RESURRECTION IN LIGHT OF TRANSHUMANISM AND INTELLECTUAL DISABILITY

This piece brings into critical conversation Christian resurrection hope, virtual versions of transhumanism, and intellectual disability and demonstrates that Christian resurrection provides a more cogent hope for people with severe intellectual disabilities than transhumanism. I argue that transhumanist virtual futures are theologically problematic, as bodily resurrection is neither required nor desirable. It is particularly problematic for people with severe intellectual disabilities given the way they would be excluded from these futures. Disability theology also raises issues with the traditional notions of “healing” in the resurrection and the implications for the value and identity of persons with intellectual disabilities. Starting with these problems, I explore the nature of Christian hope, noting the inadequacies of a virtual transhumanist future with respect to both resurrection faith and intellectual disability, and address how resurrection hope can account for issues raised in disability theology, and so properly include people with intellectual disabilities.     

A Pentecostal Way of Doing Theology: Method and Manner

Abstract:  Pentecostalism as a Christian religious movement has been given much attention by historians, sociologists and even biblical scholars yet little attention has been given to the development of a Pentecostal theology. This article emphasizes the necessity of doing Pentecostal theology by means of an integrative methodology and in a narrative manner that flows out of Pentecostal identity. Pentecostal theology must move beyond the impasse created by subsuming its identity under the rubric of 'Evangelical' in order for it to articulate a vibrant fully orbed mature Pentecostal theology. This can be accomplished only when 'Pentecostal' is taken seriously as an authentic Christian tradition with its own view of reality. I argue that one very important way of articulating a Pentecostal theology in keeping with its identity is to ground it pneumatologically and organize it around the Five-fold Gospel.     

THE BIBLICAL ROOTS OF LOCKE'S THEORY OF PERSONAL IDENTITY

Locke's consciousness‐based theory of personal identity resulted not only from his agnosticism on substance, but also from his biblical theology. This theory was intended to complement and sustain Locke's moral and theological commitments to a system of otherworldly rewards and sanctions as revealed in Scripture. Moreover, he inferred mortalist ideas from the Bible, rejecting the resurrection of the same body and maintaining that the soul dies at physical death and will be resurrected by divine miracle. Accordingly, personal identity is neither in the soul, nor in the body, nor in a union of soul and body. To Locke, personal identity is in consciousness, which, extending “backwards to any past Action or Thought,” enables the self, both in this life and upon resurrection for the Last Judgment, to recognize that “it is the same self now it was then; and ‘tis by the same self with this present one that now reflects on it, that that Action was done” (Essay II.xxvii.9).     

THE MAKER'S MEANING: DIVINE IDEAS AND SALVATION

The divine ideas tradition played a valuable but often unrecognized role in the history of Christian theology. This article investigates the possible loss to theology by examining how the divine ideas permitted a unified theology of creation and salvation, centred upon the contemplation of all things in Christ. Interpreting examples from Origen to Aquinas, the article demonstrates that leading theologians understood the full truth of all creatures to be known eternally by God in the procession of the Word, by whose incarnation, death, and resurrection the creatures are redeemed.     

“WAITING FOR THE BARBARIANS”: IDENTITY AND POLEMICISM IN THE NEO‐PATRISTIC SYNTHESIS OF GEORGES FLOROVSKY*

Georges Florovsky (1893–1979), with his “neo‐patristic synthesis”, is perhaps the most influential modern Orthodox theologian, having mentored and/or taught such theologians as Lossky and Zizioulas. However, his theology enshrines a troubling paradigm where a Pan‐Orthodox Eastern identity (“Christian Hellenism”) is asserted over against the heterodoxy of an Other which is often the West. The article traces this paradigm then argues that Florovsky's construction of Eastern Orthodoxy is dependent on German Romanticism and that his polemicism blinded him to this fact. It briefly suggests, on the basis of the Chalcedonian definition, a new "dialectical" theology of ecclesial identity where identity is established in an encounter with the Other, rather than in demonizing it.     

SERGIUS BULGAKOV'S CRITIQUE OF N. F. FEDOROV'S TECHNOLOGIZED RESURRECTION (AND WHY IT STILL MATTERS FOR THE CHRISTIAN DIALOGUE WITH TRANSHUMANISM)

Sergius Bulgakov (1871–1944) was one of the centrally important Russian Orthodox theologians of the past century. His theological system (Sophiology) is among the most detailed and comprehensive attempts at a novel, Orthodox systematic theology developed in engagement with western philosophical and theological movements. His first major work of theology, Unfading Light (1917), incorporates an early Orthodox critique of the radical Christian transhumanism propounded by Nikolai Fedorovich Fedorov (1829–1903). Fedorov had developed an account of humanity's prospects for a technologically facilitated eschatology. The goals of this article are: (1) to provide a concise summary Fedorov's ideas on technologized resurrection; (2) to provide an overview of Bulgakov's sympathetic critique of Fedorov's model; and (3) to discuss the ongoing relevance of that critique vis-à-vis current and future Christian dialogue with the transhumanist movement.     

‘THE METAPHYSICS OF CHRISTIAN ETHICS: RADICAL ORTHODOXY AND THEOSIS’

Western theology struggles with the rise of secularism and postmodernism. The Radical Orthodoxy sensibility asserts that the ancient principles of methexis (participation) and theosis (deification) presents an alternative metaphysical narrative to the narrative of secularism and the onto‐theological tradition. This article addresses the problems of the onto‐theological metaphysical tradition in Western theology by analyzing Radical Orthodoxy's rediscovery of the philosophical and theological principles of participation and theosis as articulated in the patristic tradition and in the thought of Thomas Aquinas. Using historical and analytical methods, this article will survey the biblical and patristic literature on theosis, as well as John Milbank's understanding of methexis and theosis in Thomas Aquinas. The result of this study will be to offer theosis, rooted in participation in God, as not only a soteriological model to reclaim for the West, but also a core metaphysical principle for Christian ethics that contravenes both onto‐theology and the materialistic reduction of ontology in secularism.     

Narrative and Metaphysical Ambition: On Being “in Christ”

This article addresses some of the confusion regarding the role of metaphysical claims in narrative theology. Proponents and critics of narrative theology alike wonder at the ambiguous place of metaphysical speech about God as an objective reality. This essay enters the conversation through the side door of soteriology. Rather than focusing on the relationship between narrative and metaphysics or narrative and analogy or narrative and first‐order theological claims, I examine what sort of metaphysical statements are required to make the Christian claim that human beings are “in Christ” intelligible as a soteriological reality. I argue that the Christian grammar itself assumes a Christology with a certain kind of metaphysical ambition without which Christianity lapses into incoherence. To make this case, I show that David Kelsey's “narrative identity” Christology in Eccentric Existence lacks the metaphysical statements necessary to uphold his conviction that human beings are “in Christ.” A comparison with T. F. Torrance and the Book of Hebrews reveals that when narrative circumvents metaphysical statements about the incarnate Son, soteriological claims lack coherence and the biblical narrative itself is distorted by a false metaphysic. Thus, metaphysical claims internal to the narrative of Jesus are necessary to tell the story of God faithfully. In this way, narrative is the expression of a theological metaphysics.     

COMPARATIVE THEOLOGY AFTER LIBERALISM

This article first identifies two reasons for the current marginality of the theological sub‐discipline of “comparative theology.” The first is an awareness of the imperialistic character of the universalist (inclusivist and pluralist) theologies of the recent past. The second is the assumption that Christianity's relations with other religious are extrinsic to Christian identity. Drawing on Kathryn Tanner's critique of postliberalism, it argues that interreligious comparison is integral to a theology that recognizes the essentially relational nature of Christian identity. This recognition implies a continuous revision of Christian identity that checks the tendency to essentialize and thereby exclude religious “others.”     

'Justified by the Spirit': Soteriological Reflections on the Resurrection

Justification of the Spirit has been too often overlooked in Protestant theology. This article asserts that the recovery of this aspect of New Testament theology offers the possibility of a fuller and more adequate soteriology than has often been the case in western theology. Part I provides a survey of the New Testament's witness to the resurrection and of the soteriological implications for the followers of Jesus. The focus of this survey is the relation of resurrection to justification. Part II develops some implications which follow for a theology of salvation today. The article here suggests a threefold possibility for a soteriology which reclaims the relation of Spirit to resurrection: first, soteriology could speak of the whole of the life, death and resurrection of Christ; second, soteriology could speak of the salvation of the whole of our life and death in resurrection; and third, soteriology could be concerned with the material, social and embodied from the outset.     

Spirit and self

This article is the second in a series of two on the topic of Christian anthropology as it relates to pastoral theology. In this article I shall continue to try to address some fundamental issues in the development of a Christian anthropology in a manner which is consistent with, and grows out of, the bedrock of the Christian tradition about human beings, and, when correlated with some modern reflections on the nature of the self, can prove useful in providing a relatively consistent theory of human life for pastoral care and counseling and other aspects of practical theology. First, a conception of spirit will be presented, as representing a central motif of the Christian tradition's understanding of human beings. This conception of spirit will then be discussed in relation to a conception of self which was developed in the first essay, The Self, Its Vicissitudes and Possibilities: An Essay in Theological Anthropology, published inPastoral Psychology (Lapsley, 1986).     

Christian Bioethics: Challenges in a Secularized Europe

This article summarizes in three specific sections the key challengesfaced by Christian and, particularly Orthodox, ethics in a secularizedsociety. The first section, focusing on the task and aim ofethics, defines Orthodox ethics, which is linked with asceticism(man's attempt to keep the commandments of Christ) and aimsat overcoming death and encountering the personal God. Put differently,the purpose of Orthodox ethics is the deification of human beings.The second section defines secularization and explores its consequencesfor the theology and pastoral work of the Church. Europe isdominated by scholasticism and moralism, whereas Orthodox theology,without rejecting it, transcends such a narrow preoccupationwith our own world. Orthodoxy does not regard human beings solelyfrom the perspective of their biological existence but assiststhem in going beyond mechanistic theories and the pursuit ofhappiness. The third section briefly describes how what canbe termed "bio-theology" surpasses anthropocentric ethics withregard to the relationship between creation and grace, birthand rebirth, cloning and incarnation, transplantation and deification,and death and resurrection. The article concludes that Orthodoxtheology (a) does not reject the achievements of biotechnologyor biomedicine; (b) assists humans in overcoming mortality byfinding meaning for their existence and fullness of life, and(c) does not simply postpone death, but overcomes the fear ofdeath and leads people to deification by grace.     

C. S. LEWIS & CHRISTOLOGICAL PREFIGUREMENT

This paper is an examination of the Christology and Pneumatology that C. S. Lewis read from the apparent prefiguring of elements of the Incarnation‐Resurrection narrative in religious myths, and also his assertion that the incarnation‐resurrection narrative operates on us both as fact and myth. After an initial examination of the term myth and mythopoeia, Lewis' writings on the myth that became reality (the Christ event) are discussed along with examples of prefigurement. Through his understanding of natural theology (rooted in that of Augustine, though fed by Lewis' daily reading of the Summa Theologiae) and his cautious respect for human imagination (from the poet, theologian and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge) and in contrast to his earlier deference for the conclusions of the Victorian religionist and social anthropologist James George Frazer, Lewis came to regard these prefigurements as the work of the Holy Spirit – intimations of God's salvific action in Christ – though Lewis' orthodoxy saw human imagination as flawed through original sin. This leads us to ask three questions: first, how do these prefigured ideas come to be in these myths and how do these intimations, splintered fragments of the true light, relate to Lewis' understanding of Christ as the light of the world; second, how does the Incarnation‐Resurrection narrative act/operate on us as a myth, whether spoken or read (a baptized imagination is crucial here for Lewis in both the creation and receiving/hearing of such narratives); and third, is there internal evidence for a mythopoeic interpretation within the Incarnation‐Resurrection narrative? Our conclusions can be illustrated by a brief examination of Lewis' own Christian myth – Aslan from The Chronicles of Narnia– originally written for a Christian audience but now read by mainly non‐Christian/post‐Christian children and adults.     

THEOLOGICAL APPROPRIATION OF SCIENTIFIC UNDERSTANDINGS: RESPONSE TO HEFNER, WICKEN, EAVES, AND TIPLER

Abstract. Philip Hefner's focus on contingency and field as the guiding concepts in my thinking and his characterization of my theological enterprise as a Lakatosian research program are appropriate and helpful.
I welcome Jeffrey Wicken's holistic approach to the emergence of life. Theology can appropriate the language of self-organizing systems exploiting the thermodynamic flow of energy degradation for interpreting organic life as a creation of the Spirit of God.
However, I cannot sympathize with Lindon Eaves's equation of "hard science" with a reductionism which raises the double helix to the status of icon; the "meaning" of DNA derives from its place in the total phenomenon of life—not the reverse.
Frank Tipler's cosmology raises the prospect of a rapprochement between physics and theology in the area of eschatology. A Christian cosmology, however, would require at least three modifications: contingency in the history of creation; the uniqueness of Jesus' resurrection; and the relation of these to the problem of evil.     

Suffering the Promise of God: Engaging Oswald Bayer

This article examines Oswald Bayer's wide‐ranging constructive appropriation and application of Luther's theology of the Word. Bayer grounds theology in the divine word of promise, understanding theology and the Christian life as a vita receptiva in which human action is, from first to last, responsive. He pits Luther against modern theological evasions of the Word in his insistence on the distinctively Christian pathos of existence, and his ethic of categorical gift reflects this. I conclude with a commendation of Bayer's theology of the Word, a question about the relation between God's revelation and hiddenness and a concern that he may at times compromise the definitive self‐revelation of God in Christ.     

Holy mothers of God: sex work,inheritance, and the women of Jesus’ genealogy*

ABSTRACT

In this article I consider the stories of Jesus’ women ancestors in the genealogy which opens the Gospel of Matthew. Reading these stories in light of Marxist-feminist analyses of marriage, sex work and reproductive labor, alongside contemporary sex workers’ rights discourse, and through Marcella Althaus-Reid's claim that all theology is “a sexual act”, I explore their implications for contemporary debates about property and propriety in both Christian systematic theology and contemporary Christian sexual ethics – which cannot, of course, be disentangled from one another. To conclude, I return to the twinned questions of righteousness and purity which centrally define both theological accounts of Christian identity and Christian sexual ethics, suggesting that righteousness relies for its coherence not only on the abjection of those who fall short of its standards, but also on their labor.     

“Why Do You Stand Looking Up Toward Heaven?” New Testament Eschatology at the Turn of the Millennium

Apocalyptic narrative and apocalyptic expectation are integral to the logic of the gospel. This essay surveys and critiques three unsatisfactory strategies for reinterpreting the gospel in non-apocalyptic terms: the Johannine "vertical" eschatology of union with Christ, the Jesus Seminar's construction on a non-apocalyptic Jesus, and N. T. Wright's reading of synoptic apocalyptic passages as a symbolic references to events that occurred already in the first century. Christian theology cannot dispense with a future-oriented apocalyptic eschatology. Seven reasons for this claim are set forth and explained. The concluding part of the essay suggests that the difficulty of accepting apocalyptic eschatology has often been overstated and observes that "intratextual" Christian theology will necessarily interpret the story of Jesus in apocalyptic categories.     

God and Some Recent Public Theologies

This article addresses the 'ever widening' circle of theological writing concerned with the public character of theology. Specifically, it examines the work of two 'public theologians': Linell Cady and Max Stackhouse, and it does so by focusing on the concept of God ingredient in their programmes for contemporary public theology. The article is an inquiry into the sort of theology such public theologies might be. It argues that an account of the identity and agency of God is of decisive significance for an account of the public character of theology. In keeping with its exploratory nature, it concludes with a series of questions regarding the work of Cady and Stackhouse and suggests an alternative way forward for public theology. It suggests a re-orientation of public theology 'on the basis of a more robust account of divine identity and divine agency cognizant of the possibilities afforded by the prevenient publicity of the God of the Christian gospel'.     

The Resurrection of Jesus Christ: Karl Barth and the Historicization of God's Being

Abstract:  In the excurses of Karl Barth's Church Dogmatics IV/1, Barth invests the resurrection with greater ontological significance than is typically acknowledged in contemporary accounts of his mature theology. In this article, I systematically develop the numerous statements in CD IV/1 in which Barth conceptualizes the resurrection as the historical fulfillment of God's eternal being. Subsequently, I identify the similitude between Barth's theology of the resurrection and Hegel's as presented in his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion. The article closes by suggesting that the similitude between Barth's view and Hegel's may include points of material correspondence.