Search

Many believe that at the end of her life Mary was assumed bodily ‘into heaven’ where she remains exalted by her divine son. This claim, magisterially entitled The Doctrine of the Assumption of the Blessed Virgin Mary, strikes some as absurd. Even many traditional Christians are opposed to, or have doubts about this aspect of Catholic doctrine (as they do of its non–defined equivalent among the Eastern Orthodox marked by the feast of the koimesis (dormition) of the Theotokos[the one who ‘gave birth to’ God]). Typically critics regard the doctrine as being at best a sentimental piety and at worst a neo–Pagan accretion entirely lacking in support from any appropriate quarter. Others go further, however; suggesting that it is not simply without biblical or other evidential warrant but is in some way incoherent. Here I explore some of the sources of difficulties that confront any attempt to present and defend the doctrine. Ancient and mediaeval accounts often relate narratives of Mary’s final days. Significantly, however, they also reason that given Mary’s unique status the Assumption must have happened because it should have done. I consider this style of deductive theology before examining certain historical presentations, in which I argue that there may be material evidence of the tradition as far back as the end of the persecution of Diocletian around the time of the Edict of Milan. Thereafter I take up the philosophical problems, exploring various possibilities and suggesting that acknowledging Aquinas’s insistence on the impoverished nature of disembodied human souls, and their need of resurrected embodiment is consistent with Mary’s unique role that the mode of her present existence is of a different order to that of other separated subjects.

This article examines the thought of John Milbank and Charles Taylor, taking them as case studies which suggest, from a philosophical perspective, what a post-metaphysical conception of the religious might look like. It highlights, firstly, how their work takes on board many features of the Nietzschean critique of religion, eschewing foundationalism and absolutism, while retaining a positive notion of faith, as dogmatic theology for Millbank and as one viable form of meaning in modernity for Taylor. It identifies, secondly, the alternative grounding for such reconceptions as broadly communitarian in character, lying in the cultural and historical consitions of spiritual meanings and practices. This entails an immanent turn which removes the need for absolutist justifications and so undercuts claims for religious superiority. Milbank’s postmodern Christian apologetics exemplifies such a position and yet at the same time involves exclusivist claims for the superiority of the Christian faith which, I argue, forecloses a genuine engagement with a pluralist reality. In contrast, Taylor’s more tentative diagnosis of the state of Western culture and faith involves an openness to change and to the legitimacy of other accounts of moral reality, and signals how a new conception of the problem of faith and pluralism might emerge out of a refigured theism.

This article seeks to place the theodicy of the Anglican theologian Austin Farrer, as expressed in Love Almighty and Ills Unlimited (1962), within the context of philosophical and theological approaches to the so-called “problem of evil”. Farrer's work is initially contrasted with the theodicies of John Hick and Richard Swinburne. This comparison reveals some of the rationalist and foundationalist moral assumptions of modern philosophical theodicy of which Hick and Swinburne are representatives. By contrast, it is argued that Farrer's approach is thoroughly theological and begins not with a pre-conceived ethics, but with God's self-revelation in Jesus Christ. Farrer is thus deemed to have much in common with pre-Enlightenment thinkers such as Augustine and Aquinas. Although Farrer's theodicy is seen to be theological (rather than a philosophical attempt at a resolution of the modern “problem of evil”), it is argued that he resists trends in recent theological approaches to theodicy that claim that God is passible (for example, the work of Jurgen Moltmann). This article defends divine impassibility and argues that, although Farrer's later “metaphysical personalism” implies that God may be personal to the point that he could be said to suffer, his Augustinian notion of the nature of evil as privatio boni strongly implies impassibility. This Farrer is seen to avoid two anthropomorphic approaches to theodicy: one that judges God by the standards of a foundational secular morality, and the other that ascribes certain “personal” emotions to the divine. This article defends Farrer's theological approach to theodicy and his emphasis on ecclesiology and soteriology. However, the lack of a convincing and thorough dogmatic theology is seen to render his theodicy uncompelling. Despite this weakness, it is argued that Farrer's work points theodicy towards a theological encounter with particular narratives of evil and suffering and away from the consideration of a single “problem of evil” by means of “rational”, philosophical enquiry.

Une charge pese sur la theologie de Schleiermacher, notamment sur sa theologie dogmatique. Celle-ci ferait en effet de lui un catholique. Trois exemples de ce discours sont analyses par l'A. Il s'agit tout d'abord de la critique formulee par un contemporain du theologien allemand, Karl Bretschneider dans son compte rendu de la premiere edition de la Glaubenlehre. Emil Brunner et Karl Barth ont insiste sur la theologie catholicisante de Schleiermacher. Enfin, dans son ouvrage, The Nature of Doctrine, George Lindbeck s'interesse a Schleiermacher et aux fondationnalistes catholiques

L'A. s'interesse aux critiques formulees par Johann Sebastian Drey (1768-1834) a l'egard de la theologie de Friedrich Schleiermacher. C'est dans son dernier ouvrage, Die Apologetik, que Drey s'efforce de distinguer sa theologie de celle de Schleiermacher a propos de la nature de cette discipline, de la religion et de la revelation. Drey croyait fermement que les partisans d'une explication rationnelle du surnaturel, notamment Schleiermacher, devaient etre critiques pour le bien de la religion chretienne et de l'Eglise. Drey attaque egalement sur le terrain de l'hermeneutique qui doit prendre en compte le caractere objectif de la revelation biblique