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’.     

The Idea of an Anglican Covenant: A Faith and Order Perspective

Recent Roman Catholic texts (Dominus Iesus, 2000, and Responsa, 2007) have raised the question of what kind of theological understanding enables Catholics to identify what constitutes a ‘proper’ church. This article addresses the same question with regard to both the Anglican Communion and its constituent member churches. It examines how the churches of the Anglican Communion understand their own ecclesial character at different levels (local, national/regional and worldwide), in relation above all to their professed belief in the ‘one holy catholic and apostolic Church’. It considers some of the current ways in which Anglicans appear to regard themselves as ‘church’ and seeks to identify some historic questions concerning their ecclesiology. Against this background, the article shows how the need for something like a covenant has been urged for many years and asks whether this might provide a possible way forward at a time of crisis for the Anglican Communion.     

Religious exploration and conversion in forced displacement: a case study of Syrian Muslim refugees in Lebanon receiving assistance from Evangelical Christians

The idea of religious conversion as a break with one’s past and a change in identity and belonging is precarious when religious practices are considered in a context of displacement. Forced migrants’ sense of identity often becomes volatile when social and political pressures lead them to break with various aspects of their past lives. During a season of displacement, refugees and forced migrants may begin to attend religious meetings of a tradition different to that of their family or cease engaging in religious activities at all. Using the humanitarian engagement of Lebanese Evangelical churches with Syrian Muslim refugees as a case study, this article explores some of the unique dynamics in religious engagement in refugee communities. Many Syrian refugees began to attend church and study Christianity and this did indeed seem to have some sort of ‘spiritual’ influence on them, although few considered making a more radical change in their identity.     

Catholic missions in China: failure to form native clergy

The success and failure of Christianity in China was tied to the missionaries’ ability to accommodate to Chinese culture and the powers that ruled over this vast nation. A number of reasons have been put forward regarding the failure of Christian missions in China. Inability to adapt to native norms, ignorance of Chinese language, association with Western imperialism, rivalries among various religious orders, congregations and missionary societies, and the reluctance to establish a Chinese ecclesiastical hierarchy all contributed to hindering the propagation of the gospel. This paper argues that the main reason for their failure was the refusal of European clergy to hand over the leadership of the church to the Chinese, in spite of Rome’s edicts to establish an indigenous ecclesiastical hierarchy. With local clergy in charge, the issue of language and cultural adaptation would have been resolved. Unfortunately, the native clergy were looked down upon by their Western counterparts, who were mostly motivated by national and institutional interests rather than pastoral concern for the local people. The appointment of the first Chinese bishop, Gregorio Lopéz (Luo Wenzao), was more a political move than a pastoral need.     

Views of the West: Transnationalism in contemporary Ukrainian Baptist churches

Abstract

Ukrainian evangelical churches of all kinds are intimately connected with churches, people and religious ideas in other parts of the world. Because of the close relationship between Ukrainian Baptists and churches in the United States, and also because of the perceived ubiquitous nature of American culture worldwide, including in Ukraine, the idea of ‘the West’ is a strong one in Ukrainian church life. This article, based on research carried out in four Ukrainian Baptist churches over a ten-month period, examines how Ukrainian Baptists view ‘the West’. During focus group discussions and individual interviews, Baptists portrayed the West as an object both of admiration and of distaste; as a place from which help had come for Ukraine, as well as a force that had caused problems in the Ukrainian church and in Ukraine more generally. It was described as a place of freedom, wealth, sin and opportunity; as a factor in intergenerational church conflicts; and as the place that entices church members to emigrate and abandon their home churches. Developed out of a larger study on the geographies of identity among Ukrainian Protestants, this article shows that the contemporary Ukrainian Baptist church is in part defined by a transformation from a relatively insular religious community into one that is open both to Ukrainian and western outsiders. To church members, this shift is to blame for a host of changes ushered in by transnational connections between their churches and churches in the West.     

Keeping,caring and claiming: O’odham Indians at Mission San Xavier del Bac

According to scholars, Native American Catholics live two parallel religious lives: ‘institutional’ Catholicism is juxtaposed to ‘popular religion.’ The Tohono O’odham of Southern Arizona seem to be a prominent example of this: the O’odham practice santo himdaq devotion to santos in small chapels. These devotions and indigenous practices contrast with the institutional church. Seemingly, ‘indigenised’ Catholicism is dearer to these Native groups than the central, official Church. However, this paper examines San Xavier Mission Church’s centrality both to Mission clergy and to O’odham Catholics as a place of mutual reverence. The historical examinations of the Mission Church have fixated on its Spanish origins without examining its importance to the O’odham. The church was left in the care of O’odham Indians for decades in the nineteenth century during the years of secularisation (1841–1912). I examine this care, the significance of the Mission Church to establishing the San Xavier Reservation, and the O’odham adoption of the church as their own, as well as comparing ‘institutional’ Catholicism with santo himdaq. The mission sheds light on the fluidity of missional power and social relations, the problems with essentialising Catholicism, and the changing nature of religious exchange, importance and practice over time.     

Matters of Demarcation: Philosophy,Biology, and the Evolving Fraternity between Disciplines

The influence that philosophy of science has had on scientific practice is as controversial as it is undeniable, especially in the case of biology. The dynamic between philosophy and biology as disciplines has developed along two different lines that can be characterized as ‘paternal’, on the one hand, and more ‘fraternal’, on the other. The role Popperian principles of demarcation and falsifiability have played in both the systematics community as well as the ongoing evolution–creation debates illustrate these contrasting forms of interdisciplinary engagement, underscoring the influence philosophy of science in shaping our contemporary understanding of biology in the North American context. However, a strict disciplinary distinction between philosophy and science may itself be a false dichotomy that risks hampering future development of the biological sciences. By actively engaging with philosophical considerations as an integral part of their scientific practice, nineteenth‐century biologists offer an interesting counterpoint to current trends of overspecialization and provide a model of scientists who avoided extremes of antagonism with, or subservience to, philosophy.     

‘A Garland in Place of Ashes’:1Transformative Spirituality and Mission in the Post‐Modern and Secular Contexts

In this paper I aim to explore not what is the so‐called ‘post‐modern and secular context’ but how the church responds to it, which is predominantly to blame it for ‘decline’. Yet it may not be decline, it may be something else altogether. I am reflecting on a western/UK context, but within this are theological assumptions that characterize the wider church. So, having made some remarks on how to approach decline I will then explore some transformations of spirituality and mission that are responses to the post‐modern and secular context. Underlying this is an attitude to ‘spirituality’ which is not about how we worship or our experience of the ‘ethereal’ but is about our ‘capacity for life’. But, I want to maintain that nothing new or transformative can emerge until the church stops resenting and despairing of the context and change we are experiencing. Further, I am not convinced the church in the UK or the West is able to adapt to the strangeness of this new context and will seek always to bring it back under church control. But, I will then offer a post‐modern image for transformative spirituality and mission that could leave its mark on the church.     

Spiritual development in church schools—a survey of Welsh head teachers’ perceptions

A questionnaire to assess views about spiritual development was completed by 112 of the 174 head teachers of church primary schools in Wales. The findings indicated that despite the seemingly ambiguous nature of the term ‘spiritual development’, head teachers had clear views about its meaning. While most head teachers emphasised the need for pupils to engage in their own personal spiritual search, their views differed in the extent to which they felt that promoting spiritual development meant encouraging pupils to adopt Christian beliefs. While the age and sex of head teachers was found to have no significant impact on their views; and the location and category of the school for which head teachers were responsible had only a limited impact on their view, the language of the school and the religiosity of the head teacher had a considerable impact on views regarding these matters.     

After Augsburg: The Ecumenical Future of Justification

Abstract

The recent vigorous debate between two distinguished Catholic theologians and churchmen, Joseph Ratzinger and Walter Kasper, both cardinals, regarding the relationship between the universal church and the local church, is analysed. Though to some extent resolved, the debate has also proved rather intractable, because of unacknowledged ambiguities, for example regarding the meaning of the term, ‘universal Church’, and assumptions, particularly regarding eschatology. Through an examination of key texts in the debate, beginning with the 1992 Vatican letter from the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith on the Church as communion, which stated that the universal church is ‘a reality ontologically and temporally prior to every individual church’, both Ratzinger and Kasper are seen as exponents of a western view of ‘eschatology as orientation’, which John Zizioulas has contrasted with a stronger eastern view of ‘eschatology as presence’. It is proposed that this stronger eschatology can help to clarify and resolve underlying issues in the debate.     

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’.     

National piety: Religious equality,freedom of religion and national identity in Finnish political discourse

This paper analyses the legislative discourse regarding a Members' Initiative to enact a law which was discussed in the Finnish parliament in 2006 and which proposed changes to the constitution and several laws, the purpose of which was to balance the privileged position that the Lutheran Church of Finland enjoys. The author uses critical discourse analysis to examine four different discourses emerging from the debate: inequality of religions in the eyes of the law; the ‘completeness’ of the freedom of religion in Finland; the justified hegemony of the ‘folk church’; and the church as a value base in a pluralising world. He argues that the discursive struggle between the different positions is a struggle between ‘minimalist’ and ‘maximalist’ definitions of freedom of religion and that the discussion represents a case of ‘national piety’, a conflation of discourses of religious equality, freedom of religion and national identity that reproduces the status quo.     

Instituting heteronormative belief in the law: the case of California's Proposition 22

This paper is based on ethnography of the ‘worship time’ at ‘Breakfree’ Church, a Pentecostal congregation in suburban Perth. I begin by exploring the ritualistic ways in which music is used to catalyse an ecstatic experience. Making use of the metaphor of ‘break free’, borrowed from a popular worship song, I demonstrate that music is used in deliberate ways to assist people in leaving behind the profane and encountering the sacred. Drawing on the thought of theologian Friedrich Schleiermacher and philosopher Paul Ricoeur, I explore the ways music facilitates and symbolises this experience. I demonstrate that for church members, the ecstatic divine-human encounter is the centre of their church worship and the antidote to difficult experiences such as grief or illness.     

Missions without missionaries: the social dimension of church growth in Muslim Java,Indonesia

We live in a world where religion is not confined to the private sphere and where faith-based acts, from Qur'an burning to terrorist activities, affront not only believers but also non-believers. Indonesia, where moderate Islam has long enjoyed its compatibility with other religions, has recently emerged as a hot spot of Muslim–Christian violence. In order to examine the social face of faith in ‘unfavourable’ circumstances, this article analyses church growth in Muslim Java by addressing the sociological issues related to what makes a church strong. Through an empirical investigation into the Java Christian Church, the article demonstrates that a church manages to establish a firm foothold in a Muslim society by developing the porosity of the religious frontier at the organizational level.     

SYMMETRIES OF THE KINGDOM: SUGGESTIONS FROM GIRARD AND BONHOEFFER ON THINKING THE CHURCH—STATE RELATION

The work of René Girard invites us to re‐imagine a ‘religious–secular’ interactivity within social space in a way released from the violent dualisms of the ‘sacred/profane.’ Earlier Dietrich Bonhoeffer considered the same task and suggested directions for a positive theology of church‐state relations, even as the inherited forms of these institutions were collapsing about him. This paper explores the Girardian scenario for church and state becoming rivalrous ‘doubles’– whether it be secular utopic projects doubling religious narratives of redemption, or churches doubling the state as parallel yet purer societies – and suggests resources from Bonhoeffer by which a non‐rivalrous church‐state relationality ‐ both mutually‐constituting and mutually‐limiting ‐ may be configured.     

Knowledge,conservatism, and pragmatics

The apparent contextual variability exhibited by ‘knows’ and its cognates—brought to attention in examples like Keith DeRose’s Bank Case—poses familiar problems for conservative forms of invariantism about ‘knows’. The paper examines and criticises a popular response to those problems, one that involves appeal to so-called ‘pragmatic’ features of language. It is first argued, contrary to what seems to have been generally assumed, that any pragmatic defence faces serious problems with regard to our judgments about retraction. Second, the familiar objection that the pragmatic effects at issue do not seem to be cancellable is considered. Advocates of the pragmatic defence have suggested that cancellability concerns can be dealt with fairly readily. It is shown both that their recent attempts to respond to those concerns, and some other possible attempts, are unsuccessful. Finally, it is argued that the popular relevance-based accounts, found in the work of Jessica Brown, Alan Hazlett, and Patrick Rysiew, fail to provide a satisfactory explanation of our judgments.