Cultural psychology and theology: Partners in dialogue

Cultural psychology stresses the importance of the historical and socio-cultural in the formation of the self, and, in its more sophisticated versions, acknowledges the importance of embodiment, emotions and intra-psychic factors too, making it a promising dialogue partner for theology. Following a brief summary of bridging issues between psychology and theology, Benson's recent cultural psychology framework is outlined. Its relevance for theology is considered under three headings: incarnational categories, self-knowing and God-knowing, and theological method. The essay concludes with a short reflection on the self in Eucharistic space, and the limits of cultural psychological accounts.     

THEOLOGY IN AN EVOLUTIONARY MODE

Abstract. Evolution has become the standard way of understanding the world process. Theology has to express traditional faith in the context of the contemporary world. Since the common world view has profoundly changed, from a static world of being into a dynamic world of becoming, theology needs to change its language and its understanding of the universe as God's creation. This understanding of an evolving world is to be used as a theological source. Such a change of perspective necessitates a fundamental reconstructing of theology; for theology, such reconstructing means a renewed understanding of the Creator and of the Incarnation.     

Ecology Needs Theology

A primary purpose of theology is the explication of the relationship of Creation to the transcendent for the sake of responsible action in the world. Environmental policy arenas need a perspective that can take them beyond a more limited utilitarianism. Ecology needs theology. We can appreciate to a much greater extent today than we could a generation ago that all theologies are products of particular people within particular social, cultural, historical, geographical situations. To do theology adequately, it is clearer now that many perspectives must be considered—both within and outside one's own tradition. Theology must be conversational. One's assertions of values and proposed actions must be weighed against the assertions of others. Only through such engagement will theology be meaningful to lives that must be lived with integrity in a world of manifold ambiguities. That world is the whole world in which human community is sustained and to which human beings are responsible. The practical effects of theological engagement will be to help us all find a better “common good” than may be obtained otherwise.     

THE PREVENIENCE AND PHENOMENALITY OF GRACE, OR, THE ANTERIORITY OF THE POSTERIOR

This article argues the possibility of a phenomenology of Grace on the basis of response. Its key phenomenological interlocutor is Emmanuel Levinas.
The theology of grace might be said to be the fundamental theological doctrine, embracing as it does all other theologies, yet the theology of grace has been a focus of theological debate and dispute throughout history.
This article suggests that Levinas' ethical metaphysics, when applied to theology, gives theology a new phenomenological voice in which the theology of grace might be articulated.
It begins by arguing the significance of the ordinary and the everyday and the sincerity of intentional life in the world, and then proceeds to develop the notion of the prevenience of grace ( gratia praeveniens ) in terms of Levinas notion of the posteriority of the anterior/anteriority of the posterior. Grace is known in its effects.     

Apophasis as the common root of radically secular and radically orthodox theologies

On the one hand, we find secularized approaches to theology stemming from the Death of God movement of the 1960s, particularly as pursued by North American religious thinkers such as Thomas J.J. Altizer, Mark C. Taylor, Charles Winquist, Carl Raschke, Robert Scharlemann, and others, who stress that the possibilities for theological discourse are fundamentally altered by the new conditions of our contemporary world. Our world today, in their view, is constituted wholly on a plane of immanence, to such an extent that traditional appeals to faith in an other world become difficult to take as more than self-deception and willful blindness to our human reality. On the other hand, we hear the assertion of a new lease on life for theology and its traditional affirmation of divine transcendence over and against the putative arrogance of all claims of human autonomy. This claim is advanced particularly by theologians grouped under the banner of the so-called Radical Orthodoxy. Emanating from England, originally from the University of Cambridge in the 1980s and 1990s, this movement includes such theological thinkers as John Milbank, Graham Ward, Rowan Williams, and Catherine Pickstock. It has also explicitly styled itself “post-secularist.” I propose that both approaches are based on not very fully acknowledged and often explicitly denied premises in negative theology, which surprisingly emerges as key to fostering genuine possibilities for dialogue among apparently antagonistic theological approaches.     

Neuroscience, the Person, and God: An Emergentist Account

Strong forms of dualism and eliminative materialism block any significant dialogue between the neurosciences and theology. The present article thus challenges the Sufficiency Thesis, according to which neuroscientific explanations will finally be sufficient to fully explain human behavior. It then explores the various ways in which neuroscientific results and theological interpretations contribute to an overall theory of the person. Supervenience theories, which hold that mental events are dependent on their physical substrata but not reducible to them, are explained. Challenging the determinism of "strong" supervenience, I defend a version of "soft" supervenience that allows for genuine mental causation. This view gives rise in turn to an emergentist theory of the person. Still, I remain a monist: there are many types of properties encountered in the world, although it is only the one nature that bears all these properties. The resulting position, emergentist monism , allows for diversity within the context of the one world. This view is open at the top for theological applications and interpretations while retaining the close link to neuroscientific study and its results. Theology offers an interpretation of the whole world based on a yet higher order of emergence, although the notion of God moves beyond the natural order as a whole. It therefore supplements the natural scientific study of the world without negating it.     

Search of a God for Evolution: Paul Tillich and Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin challenged theology to reach for an understanding of God that would take into account the reality of evolution. Paul Tillich's notion of New Being goes a long way toward meeting this challenge, and a theology of evolution can gain a great deal from Tillich's religious thought. But Teilhard would still wonder whether the philosophical notion of being , even when qualified by the adjective new , is itself adequate to contextualize evolution theologically. To Teilhard a theology attuned to a post–Darwinian world requires nothing less than a revolution in our understanding of what is ultimately real. It is doubtful that Tillich's rather classical theological system is radical enough to accommodate this requirement. For Teilhard, on the other hand, a metaphysics grounded in the biblical vision, wherein God is understood as the future on which the world rests as its sole support, can provide a more suitable setting for evolutionary theology.     

Contextuality and Catholicity: The Task of Orthodox Theology in Ecumenical Theological Education

The essay unfolds theological foundations for theological education in ecumenical perspective from Orthodox perspectives seeing it as a worldwide enterprise fundamental to the mission of the church, not in its institutional character, but in its eschatological awareness of being a foretaste of the Kingdom of God. The relation between early ecumenical optimism and enthusiasm towards the goal of the visible unity of the church and the wide application of contextuality, i.e. the recognition of the contextual character of theology as a method from the 1970s onwards is discussed. According to the Orthodox perspectives, the ecumenical movement has lost its momentum and coherence and its determination for the quest of visible unity with the predominant acceptance of contextuality as the guiding principle in ecumenical discussions and theological education. The author argues that Orthodox theology has to deepen the understanding of its own contextuality and soften the existing antithesis between contextuality and catholicity of theology and theological education. Orthodox perspectives should underline the relevance of a fundamental unity of divine revelation, as represented in the broad understanding of Christian tradition, which is for the entire created world, not only for believers and which is challenging both a potential distortion, wherein unity is identified with the maintenance of denominational loyalty, as well as all contextual expressions of Christian theology with regard to their relation to the overall goal of church unity. The paper concludes with a plea for all Orthodox theological education to be of some real service to the church in deciding to deal both with current issues (to be contextual) and not to lose sight of the past (to be oriented to catholicity and church unity), to both open up to ecumenical theological education while at the same time maintaining a strong commitment to the common church tradition.     

THE INTERACTION BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE IN CATHOLIC SOUTHERN EUROPE (ITALY,SPAIN, PORTUGAL)

Reviewing the last fifty years of interaction between religion and science in Catholicism in Southern Europe, common traits are clearly evident: a late awareness of the importance of this interaction and a theological reluctance to address science or to account for its progress. Early signs of the engagement between religion and science appear as a consequence of the work of the French anthropologist and theologian Teilhard de Chardin. In Italy and Spain in the last fifteen years, we see a substantive growth in the rise of research centers and academic activities devoted to exploring the common ground between science, philosophy, and theology. However, despite all these efforts and the many positive signs, there remains a long way to go for theology to consider science as a true challenge and an inspiration and to integrate it into the theological curriculum.     

WHY SHOULD THEOLOGY BE UNNATURAL?

The recovery of theological integrity effected by Karl Barth has very much to do with his polemic against natural theology. Theology has regained credibility, however, at the price of being made unnatural, severed from the world in its own ecclesiastical sphere. This actually represents an indirect endorsement of natural theology inasmuch as the naturalistic understanding of the world is taken for granted as the way the world is. One result of this is the virtual abandonment of nature for theology, reflected in an alienation from science and a disinterest in ecology. The more specific object of Barth's critique of natural theology, Nazism, may also exert a reverse influence on Barth's theology, helping to account for its Christological exclusivism. The implication of this is that the critique of natural theology requires a renewed appreciation of the naturalness of theology.     

Toward Theological Anthropology: Tracing the Anthropological Principles of John Webster

John Webster rooted his doctrine of the human creature in a thick portrait of the living God in and of himself as well as in his works wherein he creates, sustains, redeems and perfects them unto life in him. This essay will seek to unfold, introduce and assess his methodological principles for pursuing a distinctly theological anthropology by attending to his engagement of external threats in postmodern anthropology and internal challenges from christocentric anthropologies. We will suggest ways in which his anthropological project suggests a way forward for those doing systematic work today in as much as it not only offers a confident approach on distinctly Christian terms but slowly ponders the fundamental facets of such a schema, tending to theology and creation prior to a focus upon incarnational Christology as a necessary means of engaging in ‘biblical reasoning’.     

THEOLOGIANS OF SPIRITUAL TRANSFORMATION: A PROPOSAL FOR READING RENÉ GIRARD THROUGH THE LENSES OF HANS URS VON BALTHASAR AND JOHN CASSIAN

This essay contends that René Girard is not a philosopher or a scientist whose ideas are open to theological appropriation. Instead, contrary to his assertions otherwise, the Girard corpus ought to be read as if it were articulating a form of theology whose primary intellectual home can ultimately be found on a theological map. As the field of Girardian theology grows, it becomes more evident that we need some theological lenses for examining the theology already lying waiting—sometimes inchoately, sometimes not—in Girard's texts, and also for examining how theologians use and misuse his texts. If we can see that he is already doing theology then a theological critique becomes plausible and valid in principle, and indeed becomes an internal critique. Applying good interpretive lenses will provide some rigorous criteria for analyzing the degree to which Girardian theologians are following the internal logic of Girard's thought in their appropriations of it. The interpretive lenses I propose using on Girard are first the theology of Hans Urs von Balthasar (d. 1988) and then the theology of John Cassian (d. circa 435). These two theologians provide us with lenses that help us see that Girard is fundamentally a Catholic theologian involved in resisting the speculative re‐writing of Christianity by proponents of “false gnosis” and that he belongs within the category of theologians who advocate spiritual transformation and “true gnosis.”     

From the Historical Reformation to the “Digital Reformation”

This article analyzes the challenges presented for contemporary theological thinking by the current shifts in communication, starting from the concept of a “digital reformation” as a counterpart to the theological revolution that occurred with the historical Reformation. It goes on to consider how processes of communication on the Internet require us to rethink certain theological categories – from the new and renewed ways of constituting and manifesting theological knowledge within the digital environment through the emergence of new loci, subjects, and theological syntheses. We conclude that the challenges of contemporary digital culture and the need for a connected theology mean that theology, as a field of knowledge, requires a new theological synthesis.     

The Problem of Ontotheology: Complicating the Divide Between Philosophy and Theology

This paper examines the problem of ontotheology as it was defined by Martin Heidegger, and how it has subsequently been approached by those philosophers and theologians who have followed in his wake. It argues that Heidegger's initial analysis of the onto-theological condition was mistaken by its presumption of a radical divide between philosophy and theology. Furthermore, many of the key thinkers who have followed after Heidegger have merely reinscribed this supposed divide between thought and faith, rather than genuinely questioning the terms Heidegger thought self-evident. The result, even among some of the most radical and influential contemporary thinkers such as Emmanuel Levinas, John Caputo, and Jean-Luc Marion, has been a contemporary philosophy deprived of questions of faith and a theology unaccountable to its place in the world. In response to this shortcoming of contemporary philosophical and theological thought, Jacques Derrida has approached the problem of ontotheology from the dual perspective of both thought and faith, and thereby, has provided a new path of thought beyond the problem of ontotheology and towards a renewed appreciation for the possibilities for a genuine philosophical theology.     

A Principle of Incarnation in Derrida’s (Theologische?) Jugendschriften: Towards a Confessional Theology

In pursuing the question of incarnation, it must be noted from the beginning that what is at stake is Platonism. More specifically, my concern will be the relationship of Christian theology to Platonism. In this paper, I contest contemporary readings which suggest that Socrates offers an "incarnational" paradigm and construe Derrida as a "Platonist" more traditionally understood. Instead, I will argue that latent in Derrida's earlier accounts of language, particularly in Speech and Phenomena , one finds an incarnational account of language which is precisely the basis for his critique of Platonic metaphysics.     

‘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.     

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.