A Modest Proposal

The language of “consecration” to describe what the presider does at Holy Communion seems to have many more drawbacks than advantages.  Based on a misunderstanding of the Institution Narratives, it nurtures an understanding of the Sacrament centered on the presider and the elements, while marginalizing the assembly.  It leads to the unthinking adoption of practices with significant theological hazards.  In every way, “presiding” is to be preferred.     

A Feminist Lutheran Substantive Christology: Method and Methodology

Abstract : From a Euro‐American feminist perspective, not only the methods of North American ‘mainstream’ Christology but also of much feminist Christology needs refinement. The former must take into account the context of feminist consciousness, with particular attention to experience. The latter must reclaim kerygma and dogma. Drawn from history, kerygma, dogma, and experience, feminist Lutheran Christology is substantive, meaning that Jesus Christ is fully human and fully divine and sufficient for salvation.     

A Modest Proposal: A Pastoral Political Theology

A pastoral political theology, I contend, has four goals, namely, (a) critical, systemic examination of political governance, policies, programs, and structures vis-à-vis the concept of care—theologically understood, (b) facilitating cooperation and collaboration with diverse others in cultivating public spaces of appearances, (c) offering concrete plans in meeting the needs of particular others—citizen and non-citizen, and (d) assessing the implementation of these solutions. In this article, I offer an outline of and foundational theological premises for a pastoral political theology, indicating its distinctions from and contributions to political theologies that focus on justice and liberation. More specifically, I focus on the first goal, relying on the concept of care, theologically understood, as a hermeneutical framework for assessing the political milieu.     

Dialogue in Dialog: Christology

David R. Mason, A Christology of Universal Redemptive Love , p.149
Carol Jacobson, Universality and Uniqueness: A Response to David Mason , p.160
Lois Malcolm, Generative Christology: A Response to David Mason , p.162
Paul Sponheim, Probing and Protesting: A Response to David Mason , p.164
David R. Mason, Response to Jacobson, Malcolm, and Sponheim , p.166     

Actualism and Incarnation: The High Christology of Friedrich Schleiermacher

Abstract: Defining Schleiermacher's Christology simply as ‘low’ is inadequate, and based on a neglect of the crucial role that actualism plays in his theology. However, accounts that see his Christology as so high as to be docetic are equally unhappy. This article shows that there is a different way to read Schleiermacher's theology, one that avoids both views. By looking at how Schleiermacher's Christology proceeds in both ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ directions, it shows that through correctly understanding Schleiermacher's actualism we are able to see that, for Schleiermacher, Christ is the one who reproduces God's pure act of love through his own God‐consciousness. Christ, then, exists as pure activity and so, for Schleiermacher, is God incarnate. The article then addresses two common objections to Schleiermacher's Christology: that Schleiermacher's Christ is not fully human; and that, if Christ is pure act, what of the passion? The piece closes with an account of the relationship of Christology and Trinity.     

The Chalcedonian Logic of John Wesley's Christology

This article addresses John Wesley's theology of the person of Jesus Christ. Against those who have discerned either a Monophysite or a Nestorian trajectory, it argues that Wesley's Christology as a whole conforms to a Chalcedonian grammar, displaying certain Alexandrian–Lutheran tendencies in particular. It does so in three stages. First, it examines Wesley's emphasis on Christ's divinity, his ostensible reservations about Christ's humanity, and his view of the hypostatic union in the context of dogmatic christological traditions. Second, it situates his christological emphases within his deistic ideological context. Finally, it briefly illuminates the connection between Wesley's thought on Christ's person and his theology of Christ's work.     

The Counselor Who Is: A Critique and a Modest Proposal

In light of the essential nature of counseling as it is reflected in current theory and texts, it is submitted that a discrepancy exists between the idea of the counseling process on the one hand, and the teaching and practice of counseling on the other hand. The absolute necessity for the counselor's having a body of substantive information relating to the discipline of counseling psychology is asserted but the sufficient condition is that the counselor be (or become) the kind of person who can facilitate the therapeutic happening. Two proposals are made. A rationale for the exposure of counselors and aspirants to group-encounter experiences is given, and possible outcomes suggested. Further, in response to a basic need in our educational structure, the staffing of each large high school with a relatively independent counseling center is recommended. The function and possible ameliorative effects of such centers are described.     

Schleiermacher and Spirit Christology: Unexplored Horizons of The Christian Faith

One of the more recent efforts at christological construction has focused on Spirit christology, issuing in sometimes opposing constructions. At first sight, considering Schleiermacher's synthetic approach to the doctrine of the Trinity, one would suspect the irrelevance of his christology for these present efforts. However, an analysis of the convergence between christology and pneumatology in the Glaubenslehre could contribute significantly to this debate. By interpreting the God-consciousness of Jesus as the presence of the Spirit in him and correlating this with the communication of this consciousness as the work of Christ in regeneration and sanctification we achieve an identity between Christ as Spirit-bearer and Spirit-sender (viz. the Redeemer understood according to his 'peculiar activity' and 'exclusive dignity'). By lending a stronger pneumatological bearing to Schleiermacher's theological discourse (picking up the suggestion of Karl Barth) Schleiermacher helps illuminate some of the issues that have arisen in debate over Spirit christology.     

Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness

Book Information Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness. Purple Haze: The Puzzle of Consciousness Levine Joseph New York Oxford University Press 2001 204 Hardback £22.50 By Levine Joseph. Oxford University Press. New York. Pp. 204. Hardback:£22.50,     

The Thought of David Bakan: Overview and Implications for Christology

As a personologist who utilized both the Freudian, psychoanalytic account of psychological development and functioning and the Jewish mystical and Kabbalistic understanding of the soul's redemption from evil, David Bakan offers to Christian theologians a rich perspective from which to re-think the soteriology of the cross.     

解析一个文字游戏

我的父亲在当地也算得上是一位知书识字的先生。但这“先生”并非教书,而是传播为人指点迷津的“测字”,而小有名气。 那年,我在人生的十字路口上面临选择:一是继续在中学读书,攻考大学中专;二是走进社会,开始自食其力,到村小学代课。那是刚刚实行改革开放的年代,家中贫穷,我在学校里的最大感受就是肚子整天“闹革命”,随时感到嘴馋。害怕挨饿,成了我在学校读书的最大心理障碍。有一天父亲拿来一个已脏烂的笔记本,随意翻了一页,让我在上     

The Puzzle of Metacoherence

I develop a view of the common factor between subjectively indistinguishable perceptions and hallucinations that avoids analyzing experiences as involving awareness relations to abstract entities, sense‐data, or any other peculiar entities. The main thesis is that hallucinating subjects employ concepts (or analogous nonconceptual structures), namely the very same concepts that in a subjectively indistinguishable perception are employed as a consequence of being related to external, mind‐independent objects or property‐instances. These concepts and nonconceptual structures are identified with modes of presentation types. Since a hallucinating subject is not related to any such objects or property‐instances, the concepts she employs remain empty. I argue that the phenomenology of hallucinations and perceptions can be identified with employing concepts and analogous nonconceptual structures. By doing so, I defend an ontologically minimalist view of the phenomenology of experience that (1) vindicates Aristotelianism about types and (2) amounts to a naturalized view of the phenomenology of experience.