A diasporic Christian theology: towards an eschatological understanding of theological education in post-communist societies

Christian theology amidst post-communist societies finds itself in a precarious situation as it seeks to emerge from the competing social imaginaries of its totalitarian Soviet past and the democratic capitalism of its future. To do so, eschatological hope will need to spring eternal as it seeks understanding by faith in love of the triune God and its diverse neighbours while reckoning with its diasporic status. As such, this programmatic article succinctly circumscribes the meaning (hope), message (faith), and mission (love) of a diasporic Christian theology with an ecumenical vision predominately for university theological education under post-communist conditions. It seeks to give reason for the eschatological hope within (meaning) that is fixated on the resurrected Christ in the Spirit (message) for the wisdom and flourishing of humanity (mission).     

Lumen Gentium No. 8, and Subsistit in, Again

Francis A. Sullivan says that the one Church of Christ continues to exist perfectly in the Catholic Church, and is present imperfectly in other churches and ecclesial communities. However, he thinks Lumen Gentium 8 also enables us to say that the many churches, non-Catholic and Catholic, are all in the one Church of Christ, since to say the one Church of Christ subsists in the Catholic Church means no more than "continues to exist in" the Catholic Church. In this way, he denies the identity of the one Church of Christ and the Catholic Church. We point out that magisterial documents since Vatican II have consistently refused this proposal, and have instead spoken only of the one Church being present or operative, according to degrees, in non-Catholic churches and communities. We argue that while it is true there is "ecclesial reality" outside the Catholic Church, in that there are elements of truth and sanctification outside of her, the one Church of Christ of which Vatican II expressly speaks is the Church with all the gifts of unity and instruments for salvation with which Christ endowed it. The Catholic Church is not contained in any larger divinely willed and dominically instituted ecclesial reality, and it is without qualification the one Church of Christ and the one Church of Christ is without qualification the Catholic Church.     

Las Casas as Theological Counteroffensive: An Interpretation of Gustavo Gutiérrez's Las Casas: In Search of the Poor of Jesus Christ

Peruvian liberation theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez's massive work, Las Casas: In Search of the Poor of Jesus Christ, should not be read as a defensive or retreating move for liberation theology in the face of two decades of opposition. Rather, it is best understood as a creative and strategic counteroffensive to advance liberation theology in terms that the Vatican can only find difficult to counter. Nevertheless, liberation theology struggles with the difficulty of intellectually justifying itself on nondependency and non-Marxist grounds. In any case, the struggle for the work of liberation in Latin America continues.     

Mission Theology of the Church

This article on the mission theology of the church, a personal perspective by the vice‐moderator of CWME, draws on documentation produced by the commission and also responds to the Faith and Order document, The Nature and Mission of the Church. It is based on the trinitarian paradigm of mission referred to as missio Dei, which emphasizes the priority of God's sending activity in the world, by the Son and the Spirit, and the contingency of the church and its mission activities upon that. Therefore, it is concerned with the participation of the church in God's mission to and in the world, and from this perspective, has a particular interest with the actual, empirical church rather than the ideal church, recognizing that the church exists in many different forms in particular social, cultural, economic and political contexts. The article argues that the church is “missionary by its very nature”. Both theologically and empirically, it is impossible to separate the church from mission. Indeed mission is the very life of the church and the church is missionary by its very nature the Spirit of Christ breathed into the disciples at the same time as he sent them into the world. The mission theology of the church as it has developed in ecumenical discussion over the 20th and early 21st centuries is discussed in terms of the relationship of the church to the three persons of the Trinity: as foretaste of the kingdom of God; as the body of Christ; and as a movement of the Spirit. The article shows that being in mission is to cross the usual boundaries and bring new perspectives from outside to bear, and this is a never‐ending, enriching process.     

Catholic hospitals and Catholic identity.

Catholic hospitals seek to offer health care in accord with the example of Christ. They have several models to assist in this effort. The first model is the values portrayed in the Gospels. The Catholic Church has sought to embody these Gospel values in specific teachings. These teachings have been further specified for hospitals in the United States by the National Conference of Catholic Bishops in the Ethical and Religious Directives. Finally, the Gospels values are also expressed for individual Catholic health care systems in mission statements and statements of Catholic identity. This article examines the worth of mission and identity statements, and explains that the statements must be put into practice through a process of internalization before they will be able to be of worth to the Catholic health care apostolate.     

Seeing,Embodying, and Proclaiming Christ

This essay examines the way Irenaeus of Lyons describes Blandina in her martyrdom: seen by others as embodying Christ and so encouraging them to also bear witness and be born into life by the Virgin Mother, the Church. It explores in particular Irenaeus' exegetical moves, so as to regain a sense of the unity of theology and exegesis as a transformed and transforming vision, which in turn extends the incarnation of Christ into the present in those who also take up the cross. In this way Irenaeus offers a way of understanding the unity of the discipline of theology and a vision of life and the Church that speaks to our contemporary situation.     

Mission and reconciliation

Conflicts and wars often occur, with devastating consequences in society. Attaining reconciliation is a challenging task, especially if each side in the conflict articulates its identity in terms of victimhood through education, history, and memories. Can theology offer an adequate answer and help overcome conflicts and bring forgiveness? Each time we serve the liturgy, we are reminded to remember the future and remember Christ’s ultimate forgiveness. In that sense, worship as a communal and God-oriented event can remind us of our mission, which is participation in God’s salvific work. This paper offers some theological insights as guidelines for Christians and their respective communities to pursue. Hopefully, theology will prove its ability and strength to foster reconciliation and unity in a suffering world.     

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.     

THE CALL AND THE GIFTED IN CHRISTOLOGICAL PERSPECTIVE: A CONSIDERATION OF BRIAN ROBINETTE'S CRITIQUE OF JEAN‐LUC MARION

In his recent article, ‘A Gift to Theology? Jean‐Luc Marion's ‘Saturated Phenomena’ in Christological Perspective’, Brian Robinette has critiqued Marion's phenomenology for confining theology to a one‐sided approach to Christology, one that stresses only the passive, mystical reception of Christ. To correct this imbalance, Robinette brings Marion into dialogue with those more active Christologies or ‘prophetical‐ethical’ liberation theologies of Gustavo Gutierrez, Johann Baptist Metz and others that stress a life‐praxis focused on confronting evil and suffering. In this essay I am arguing that Robinette has not fully developed the ‘logic’ of Marion's phenomenology of the ‘call and the gifted’, in which both a passive and an active element are operative. I explore more fully that very dynamic phenomenological process of the call‐and‐the‐gifted as developed in Marion's work Being Given: Toward a Phenomenology of Givenness. Once viewed in Christological perspective, and especially in light of Christ's death and resurrection, Marion's phenomenology entails an ethical trope consistent with the mission of Christ as rendered in Scriptural revelation, and thus the gap between Marion's work and the prophetical‐ethical theologies of Gutierrez and Baptist Metz becomes narrowed.     

Towards an African Theology of Reconciliation: A Missiological Reflection on the Instrumentum Laboris of the Second African Synod

This essay is a critical theological and pastoral study of the Working Document of the Second African Synod. The article engages the articles in the document which deal with the theme of reconciliation. This essay begins by exploring the Christological and ecclesiological foundations for an African theology of reconciliation as found in the working document. While engaging the significant aspects of the working document which relate to articulating an African theology of reconciliation, this essay shows the limitations of the document in its historical and cultural analysis of the situation in Africa. Drawing from a phenomenological hermeneutical engagement with African history, cultural grammar, and Christ‐centered African Christian imagination, the essay widens the scope of theological engagement with the task of reconciliation in Africa. It does a theological aesthetics of reconciliation in Africa, by integrating diverse cultural, ontological, and Christological symbols within the African world on vital participation and vital union. Through the inculturation of vital participation as analogous to Trinitarian Communion, the essay shows how the Church in Africa can deal with the ever‐revolving cycle of violence, conflicts, and divisions in the churches and political institutions which have all hampered the mission of building relationship and God's kingdom in Africa. The essay concludes by recommending four pastoral approaches through which the Catholic Church in Africa can be both a reconciled community and an instrument for reconciliation in Africa.     

The Evangelical Necessity of Creedal Confession in the World of Empire

The author argues that in the world of Empire where greed, violence, and idolatry pervade, the Church is challenged to recognise that it exists to witness to the radical, liberating message of the gospel of the crucified and risen Lord, Jesus Christ. The Church is challenged to recognise and acknowledge how it is a beneficiary of Empire, but that its focus is to be on the Lord Jesus Christ and not the ‘Caesars’ who cannot give the life, healing, and forgiveness that only God can give. Faithfulness to the gospel calls for creedal‐confession that becomes both inevitable and necessary because the church's confession is communal. The community in Christ needs one another in order to be faithful through mutual creedal‐remembering and reminding of the identity of the God of Jesus Christ.     

The Church in the Contemporary Ecumenical‐Missional Moment: Together towards Life in Dialogue with The Cape Town Commitment and Evangelii Gaudium

The doctrine of the church has always been important to developments in mission and ecumenism – a fact that has been true since the birth of the modern ecumenical movement and is no less so today. This article compares three recent documents – the WCC's Together towards Life (2013), the Lausanne Movement's Cape Town Commitment (2011), and Pope Francis' exhortation Evangelii Gaudium (2014) – in light of the rise of a prominent new way of expressing the role of the church in the mission of Christ (missio Dei). This theological development has significantly impacted mission and ecumenical thinking and practice in recent decades, requiring us to consider the church's relationship to mission in a new and important way. The article reveals various aspects of missio Dei theology at work in all three of these documents, and finally looks at the visionary leadership of Pope Francis in calling the Catholic Church to a joyful expression of the gospel of Christ through both words and deeds. EG does not so much address the doctrine of the church as it assumes it. Its concern is far more pastoral: “How do we more effectively and powerfully communicate the gospel in our time?”     

A dialogue between the Orthodox Church of Georgia and the ‘Evangelical Christians-Baptists’ of Georgia (1979–1980) with its wider Baptist context

In 1979–80 conversations were held between representatives of the Orthodox Church of Georgia and the ‘Evangelical Christians-Baptists’ of Georgia in a situation of oppression by the Communist state. The agreed document that emerged from this dialogue is printed here, and is preceded by an article which expounds it from a Baptist perspective, sets it in the wider context of Baptist theological and ecumenical theology, and relates it to the practices of the present-day Baptist Church of Georgia. The stated purpose of the dialogue was to achieve reconciliation and unity between Orthodox and Baptist Christians in Georgia, first by agreeing substantial matters of doctrine and then by adopting a common liturgy and common sacramental life. Among the range of subjects reviewed, including the Blessed Virgin Mary, the saints, nationalism, confession and icons, the discussion on baptism is perhaps the most adventurous, and remains promising though flawed. The document does not represent the views of the present-day Orthodox Church of Georgia, and its contents clearly reflect the political pressures under which it was composed. However, it is of historical interest, and some will see it as a sign of hope for co-operation in the mission of God.     

Mission for/as Reconciliatory Emancipation

Since Christian mission in the way of Jesus Christ is best understood and experienced in the fringes of the society, it is imperative that we listen to and learn from marginalized voices. Keeping this in mind, this article looks at the relevance of the theology of mission of the Dalit theologian and activist Masilamani Azariah, who served as a Bishop of the Church of South India in the 1990s. It seeks to highlight his pioneering work, which was discomforting for some dominant caste Indian Christians, in challenging the Indian church as well as the global ecumenical movement to speak up and act against untouchability and caste discrimination. Using Azariah's radical perspectives of mission as a lens, and employing the framework of reconciliatory emancipation, a theological concept explicated by the American political theologian Mark Taylor, this essay proposes that the mission of the church that endeavours to be holistic and Christ-centred would and should be committed to the empowerment and healing of the oppressed, driven by a burning prophetic rage against injustice, even while retaining the space for forgiveness and repentance, with the ultimate goal of building the kingdom of God that transcends divisive and discriminating boundaries.     

Necessary Difference: A Sermon

The following is a sermon preached by Nathan Carlin at St. John’s Church (United Church of Christ) in Houston, Texas, on January 27, 2013. In line with the conference theme—body/soul, spirit/flesh, self/other—the sermon focuses on several verses in Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth in which Paul discusses the Church as the Body of Christ. The sermon text (1 Cor. 12:12–27) was not chosen because the author was still thinking about the conference theme (the conference, as noted, took place on October 17–19, 2012); this text simply happened to be the lectionary passage assigned to the date. In the sermon, the biblical text, the psychological concept of “the narcissism of minor differences,” and a story from the author’s childhood (a story about Bible quiz competitions) are interwoven. The author felt that such a topic was appropriate for St. John’s Church because the church, on the day that the sermon was delivered, was scheduled to meet about the topic of confirmation classes for youth. All of this is to say that sermons are often expressions of pastoral theology because sermons, while inherently theological, are also pastoral in that they are addressed to specific audiences and focus on matters that the preacher discerns to be of existential concern, both collectively and individually, for those whom the preacher is addressing. In terms of method and style, this sermon was written following the technique of Robert Dykstra as articulated in his Discovering a Sermon: Personal Pastoral Preaching.     

‘We believe in One,Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church’: the Armenian Apostolic perspective

This article reviews the four marks of the Church ? Unity, Holiness, Catholicity and Apostolicity ? from the perspective of the Armenian Apostolic historical, doctrinal and liturgical tradition, with particular reference to the importance of the total identification of church and people and drawing attention to comparisons with the ecclesiological works and treatises of Western traditions. Within the rich context of the history and liturgical life of the Armenian Orthodox Church, the author expounds the meaning of the four marks of the Church, their co-inherence and linkage with the Incarnation of Christ, which enables the Church, ‘in her earthly and heavenly missions’ to reflect ‘the historical and mystical realities of what the apostles experienced in their mission as witnesses and teachers sent by Jesus Christ himself’.     

Torture and Theology of the Cross

Abstract : A theology of the cross must (1) connect Christ's cross with the reality of torture, and (2) differentiate misuse of Christ's crucifixion from its power in the struggle against torture. To meet these tasks, a theology of the cross needs to (1) refuse to separate Christ's crucifixion from his life and resurrection, and (2) recognize that the crucified Christ can only be understood in relation to all Christ's suffering sisters and brothers.     

The Mission of the Church in the Contemporary World in Light of the Decisions of the Holy and Great Council

This article discusses the place of mission in the Orthodox Church. The document “The Mission of the Orthodox Church in Today's World,” which was approved by the Holy and Great Council of the Orthodox Church held in Crete in 2016, is still in the process of reception, as are the other documents, but it constitutes, without doubt, a new era in Orthodox missiology – as indeed the Great and Holy Council in Crete represents a new era in Orthodoxy. The interrelatedness of unity and mission is not a question of methodology or strategy. It is an ontological one: it is related to the very essence of koinonia as fellowship in the triune God, and to the specific aspect of κοινονια as participation in God's economy in and for the world. Mission is commitment to the work of the triune God incarnated in Jesus Christ. Both are God’s gift and command. It is only in unity with the Holy Trinity that the church is able to fulfil its vocation.