Eschatology and Theology of Hope: The Impact of Gaudium et Spes on the Thought of Edward Schillebeeckx

Before the Second Vatican Council, Edward Schillebeeckx O.P. (1914–2009) had begun to reassess and the role and nature of eschatology as a discipline within Catholic theology. He began to formulate an early theology of hope in the 1950s which he would later develop quite extensively. His reflections during the Council on the famous draft of Gaudium et Spes, and on the finished document reveal the urgency of rethinking the essential relationship between ‘church’ and ‘world’. This article examines the impact of Gaudium et Spes on Schillebeeckx's work in two aspects. First, the way that it helped to orient his eschatological thought towards an emphasis on the ‘future’. The distance between the ‘already’ and the ‘not yet’, coupled with the essential place of creation as the site of God's salvific activity in history, began to push Schillebeeckx towards an eschatological and primarily future‐oriented understanding of Christian praxis and preaching. Second, this article will examine the anthropology that Schillebeeckx reads from Gaudium et Spes and the way in which a ‘new image’ of humanity, in light of a future‐oriented eschatology, contributed to his attempts to rethink the tension between ‘church’ and ‘world’.     

Tradition and Reason: Two Uses of Reason, Critical and Contemplative

Abstract: Reason, as it is proper to the task of theology, has two uses: critical and contemplative. This twofold appropriation of reason sets the stage for this article, a stage occupied in turn by Newman and by Aquinas. The critical function of theological work is expressed via the 1877 preface which Newman wrote for his Lectures on the Prophetic Office of the Church. The critical office of theology is vital not only to the practice of theology itself but to the liturgical and spiritual life of the church, and to the exercise of church leadership if that leadership is not to descend into tyranny. For the theologian, reason is not antithetical to contemplation; rather, contemplation includes a form of reasoning. Theology is ‘a schooling in the discipline of contemplating the self‐revealing God’, a discipline of ‘metaphysical ascesis’ which compels both intellectual conversion and moral practice. Such an ascesis was practised well by Aquinas, and Kerr reflects on the Summa Theologiae as ‘a training in a form of metaphysical reasoning’, being schooled in the knowledge of God which strips away our ‘idolatorous inclinations’.     

Cross,Contestation and Consummation: An Engagement with Ted Peters’ God – The World's Future

The third edition of Peters’ systematic theology provides an opportunity to assess his contextual theology, descended from Tillich's ‘method of correlation’, from the perspective of my own textual theology, descended from Karl Barth's revelation theology, on the common ground of a shared Trinitarianism and positive retrieval of the twentieth‐century's rediscovery of the New Testament eschatology. The article affirms Peters’ sharply focused cognitive claim to truth about God as the world's future, but asks a series of questions about how this claim is actually sustained in Peters’ capacious work. It concludes with the ‘apocalyptic’ judgement that Peters’ ‘progressive’ method is not fully adequate to the challenge of our present spiritual situation.     

‘Implanted in us by Nature’: The Cognitive Science of Religion and its Importance for Theology

Abstract: The Cognitive Science of Religion (CSR) holds that religion emerges from human cognition and its intuitions. Hence, it describes religion as a ‘natural’ belief in ‘supernatural agents’. Traditional theology also maintained that there is an ‘innate’ or ‘implanted’ knowledge of God or gods. It will be argued that CSR and theology can be related, yet not in a straightforward manner. After sketching out in what sense CSR calls religion ‘natural’ and how it describes ‘supernatural agents’, this article explores some examples of the traditional theological doctrine of an ‘implanted’ knowledge of God. It shows that the reliability of such an ‘implanted’ knowledge of God was disputed among theologians and, even if it was affirmed, had an ambiguous position in theology. This also applies to CSR if it is to be related to the traditional theological doctrine. There are illuminating convergences between CSR and theology but also considerable divergences. Both, however, prove significant for theology.     

Truth as a ‘Living Bond’: A Dialectical Response to Recent Rhetorical Theology

Abstract: In recent years, the Radical Orthodoxy movement (especially John Milbank) has developed an influential theological response to the putative nihilism inherent in modern philosophical tendencies to construe the relation between finite and infinite realities as utterly disjunctive and thus incapable of mediation. This response, which generally implies the championing of a ‘participatory’ ontology, has been very hostile to Protestant or ‘dialectical’ theology, whose insistence upon an ‘indirect’ rather than a ‘rhetorical’ form of truth is taken to implicate such theology in the nihilism of a ‘univocal’ ontology. In this article I offer another reading of the dialectical, via Søren Kierkegaard and René Girard, according to which its anti‐objectivism is due not to the inheritance of modern epistemological dilemmas but to a quite biblical existential rigor. I argue, contrary to Milbank, that this rigor is not finally gnostic, but instead that it alone can preserve the form of truth as a living, spiritual form.     

On Prayer in Anglican Systematic Theology

For an ecclesial tradition that does not have a particularly strong history of systematic theology, it is curious that several of those currently engaged in the production of large‐scale, multi‐volume projects of systematic theology are Anglican theologians. In this article, I investigate three such projects: Sarah Coakley’s God, Sexuality and the Self: An Essay ‘On the Trinity’, Graham Ward’s How the Light Gets In: Ethical Life I, and Katherine Sonderegger’s Systematic Theology – Vol. 1: The Doctrine of God. In the first section, I examine these examples of systematic theology in light of Stephen Sykes’s analysis of the state of the discipline in Anglican theology. Then, in the second section, I identify a common characteristic shared by Coakley, Ward, and Sonderegger: the grounding of systematic theology in the practice of prayer. I argue that although these contemporary systematicians might not see themselves as enunciating an Anglican systematics, the systematic seriousness they accord to matters of prayer can be interpreted as articulations of the Anglican propensity to grant theological priority to the liturgy. In the final section, I suggest that for all the theological opportunities made available by the systematic reclamation of prayer, these invariably positive embraces of prayer leave little space for what might be called the Schattenseite of prayer. There is a ‘shadow‐side’ to the history and practice of prayer that I argue needs to be appropriately theorized if the category of prayer is to have a future in the discipline of systematic theology.     

Visual Theologies and Material Form

This article offers a reading of a feature of John Calvin's theology that has received little attention – the role of visuality in his writings on the sacraments as developed between the years of 1536 and 1561. As an intervention into longstanding debates over the legacy of his sacramental theology, I argue that Calvin's use of visual categories to describe the sacramental event is best understood in terms of what I will call the ‘apoiconic’: a vision of divinity had through visual negation. I suggest that for Calvin the sacramental elements signal a divine absence that, in turn, redirects the gaze upward to Christ, whose spiritual presence constitutes the sacraments' substance. To make this argument, I trace the trinitarian dynamics of this ‘apoiconic vision’, where the Spirit unveils the living Christ by illumining the eyes of faith to comprehend the power of God that dwells therein. I close by reflecting on ‘apoiconicity’ as a strategy for moving beyond anxieties over materiality's idolatrous entanglements and for developing a sacramental theology that is cosmic in scope.     

‘THEY KNOW HIM BY HIS VOICE’: NEWMAN ON THE IMAGINATION,CHRISTOLOGY, AND THE THEOLOGY OF RELIGIONS

Newman's gift to Catholic theology is the gift of ‘wisdom’: an ability to discern the shape of the whole, not by way of ‘generalized laws or metaphysical conjectures’ but through the ‘concrete’ and ‘living’ soil of the religious imagination. Newman's elemental trust in the religious sensibilities of non‐Christians and the revelatory roots of ‘natural religion’ proceeds from his view of the religious imagination as the experiential, pre‐verbal, and pre‐conceptual realm of contact between God and human persons always and everywhere. Above all Newman recognizes the salvific character of a life of personal holiness. In this respect the life of Christ exemplifies continuity and not radical interruption with countless human beings outside our usual ken who quietly lead lives of sacramental holiness. Bringing Newman into dialogue with contemporary theologians such as Jacques Dupuis, Roger Haight, Terrence Merrigan, and Thomas Merton, the author proposes four lessons for a theology of religions cast ‘under the light of Wisdom’.     

Videtur Quod: On Method in Theology

Abstract: Theological language has always faced a fundamental dilemma: it seeks to put the divine reality into limited human language. While this dilemma can obfuscate our theological pathways, it can also generate a new awareness of the task and possibilities of the discipline. New testimonials, or uniquely accented human experiential utterances, have emerged in theological discourse in the past decades, greatly increasing our vision of the expansiveness of theology. The tools for integration into systematic or discursive development are still, however, lacking. This article suggests that an extension of the innovative methodology of Thomas Aquinas, beginning and ending with ‘what seems’ to be the case, putting testimony into discursive forms, and testing for a fittingness with the mysterious and excessive mystery of the divine reality, offers a promising path for discerning common and trustworthy theological language.     

Empirical Theology: inter‐ or intra‐disciplinary?

This article seeks to reflect on the methodology of what has come to be called ‘empirical theology’. In particular it considers the question of how theology might relate to the social sciences. The more established expression is what is called the ‘inter‐disciplinary’ approach. This has been advocated by both sociologists and religious educationalists. In contrast, Johannes van der Ven, Professor of Practical Theology at the Catholic University of Nijmegen, advocates an ‘intra‐disciplinary’ approach. This approach is innovative in seeking to incorporate social science methods within a theological framework. The contention of the article is that while some forms of inter‐disciplinary approaches are potentially more rigorous they are not without difficulty. Theologians, however, have been given a valuable model of how theology might relate to the social sciences by means of van der Ven's approach. It now remains for the practical theological community of scholars to assess it.     

An Environment Friendly God: Response to Nancy Hudson’s “Divine Immanence”

This paper is a response to Professor Nancy Hudson’s paper “Divine Immanence: Nicholas of Cusa’s Understanding of Theophany and the Retrieval of a ‘New’ Model of God,” (Nancy Hudson, “Divine Immanence: Nicholas of Cusa’s Understanding of Theophany and the Retrieval of a ‘New’ Model of God,” Journal of Theological Studies 56.2 (October 2005): 450–470). The global ecological crisis has spawned intensive reflection about living in right relationship with the earth. Western Christian thought has received special scrutiny since modern alienation from nature has been traced to Christian theology. Undiscovered within the mystical theology of Nicholas of Cusa lies an ecologically promising vision of nature. The concept of divine immanence presented by this medieval thinker provides a rich spirituality that is inclusive, rather than exclusive, of the natural world. It is also far more intimate than contemporary stewardship theology. Cusanus interprets theophany as divine self-expression. A series of striking metaphors, including God’s enfolding and unfolding, God as ‘Not-other’, and Christ as the contracted maximum, reveals a holistic spirituality. Nicholas of Cusa’s concept of divine immanence infuses the world with immeasurable value and gives rise to a Christian theology that can address the current ecological crisis. This paper was delivered during the APA Pacific 2007 Mini-Conference on Models of God in response to a presentation of Nancy Hudson’s “Divine Immanence.”     

The Gender of the Cyborg

Abstract

This article focuses upon the sexual politics of contemporary cyborg iconography. It interrogates the manner in which representational practices confirm or challenge gender regulation and explores the links between the cyborg and the queer. Finally, the potential of ‘cyborg theology’ is discussed. What are the implications for women of this profoundly sacramental theology which challenges dominant understandings of imminence and transcendence?     

JESUS' LANGUAGE‐GAMES: THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE NOTION OF LANGUAGE‐GAME FOR A REFORMULATION OF ‘NEW TESTAMENT BIBLICAL THEOLOGY’1

Despite the exciting consequences of the later Wittgenstein's notion of language‐game for theology in general, one discipline centered on language – exegesis and biblical theology – has remained largely unaffected by this advance. I here show that describing biblical language as a language‐game not only enhances our understanding of biblical texts; it also explodes a long‐term impasse separating the interpretation from the ‘actualization’ of sacred texts. Insights taken from the notion of a language‐game may, as with form of life and grammar, emerge as central building blocks for reformulating the postulates of biblical theology. 1     

Charismatic theology: approaches and themes

Ever since the irruption of Pentecostal spirituality within Protestant and Roman Catholic denominations, there has been a gradual emergence of what might be called ‘charismatic theology’. To be sure a lot of this theology is and has been written at a popular level, but within the last twenty years there has evolved a distinct theology with discernable approaches and common themes expressed at an academic level. This survey article seeks to articulate such a charismatic theology and discusses some critical questions en route.     

Divine Persons and Their ‘Reduction’ to Relations: A Plea for Conceptual Clarity

Contemporary trinitarian ‘revisionist’ theologians frequently accuse ‘classical’ or ‘Western’ (e.g. Augustinian, Thomistic) trinitarian theologies of ‘reducing’ the divine Persons to their relations with and to one another. In response, many defenders of the Western tradition of trinitarian theology suggest that the alternative accounts of contemporary revisionists, likewise, ‘reduce’ the Persons to relations. Thus, the same charge (the reduction of Persons to relations) is employed in two opposing viewpoints as a way of critiquing the other. This article aims to note this (apparently hitherto unremarked) phenomenon and to explore the theological rationale for its development. In conclusion, the article suggests how a new conceptual clarity may be achieved in light of this semantic confusion and points toward the possibility of a renewed dialogue between classical forms of trinitarian theology and their contemporary critics.     

Islam,HIV/AIDS and activism: a critical analysis of some themes in Positive Muslims' ‘theology of compassion’

The present article is a critical analysis of the South African organization Positive Muslims' ‘theology of compassion’, put forward by its proponents as a Muslim religious initiative to combat the spread of HIV/AIDS and the stigmatization of those affected by the disease. The article addresses the hermeneutics applied and the results reached in relation to a wider contemporary Muslim religious discourse on HIV/AIDS. It also connects the ‘theology of compassion’ to a broader transnational movement of progressive Islam, of which the ‘theology of compassion’ is a practical, grass-roots application. The main analytical focus, however, is on the way in which certain features in this theology are shaped by basic assumptions on the part of its producers concerning the beliefs, emotions and background knowledge of its main stated consumers: believing Muslims.