Search

These seven theses suggest the centrality of reflection on Patristic theology for the enterprise of dogmatic theology in a Catholic context. Dogmatic theology itself is used here as an alternative to the modern use of “systematic” theology. In order to see why and how Patristic theology should occupy this place, reflection is necessary on the theology of tradition—and the continual authority of Patristic texts for Catholic theologians—and then on the importance of post-Renaissance modes of historiography. These discussions constitute part of a theological reflection on the nature of theology itself. Although the aim of this piece is to discuss the configuration of (Latin) Catholic theology, the questions raised should be of interest to theologians across a broad ecumenical range.

Theology as “critical dogmatics” points to a way forward between naturalism and constructivism in thought “after modernity.” It urges neither pre-critical dogmatics nor modern systematizing, but a proposal for a pragmatic and hermeneutical theology making a single claim to truth about God as the One determined to redeem and fulfill the creation through the missions of God's Son and Spirit. This article clarifies the difference between Rudolph Bultmann's program of demythologization, and more generally, dialectical theology's antinomy of “the word of God and the word of humans,” and the sense of “deliteralization” in the strong trinitarian personalism of critical dogmatics.

The article relates Paul Hinlicky's project of critical dogmatics to the constructive work of two Reformed theologians, Jurgen Moltmann's The Crucified God (1972) and Mark Lewis Taylor's The Executed God (2001/2015). After highlighting central tenets of Hinlicky's paradigm I discuss and compare the monographs by Moltmann and Taylor, weighing their similarities and differences. I conclude by pointing out the shared interest of critical dogmatics and constructive theology.

The emergence in the 1980s and 1990s of a renewed Thomistic moral theology showed that the same could and should be attempted in dogmatic theology, with full weight given to the biblical, patristic, and spiritual emphases of the Ressourcement movement

Both Friedrich Schleiermacher and Karl Barth attempted to keep Christian dogmatic theology free from abstract philosophical speculation. However, Barth thinks that Schleiermacher is guilty of the very speculative theology to which Schleiermacher is so averse. This article will defend the claim that Barth misreads Schleiermacher's Glaubenslehre, such that Schleiermacher's theological method and formulations are just as anti-speculative as Barth's. To defend this claim, this article examines what Barth considers to be speculative theology as well as his accusation that Schleiermacher is guilty of such speculative proposals. After considering Barth's challenges, this article defends Schleiermacher's methodology and theology as anti-speculative. Finally, several additional accusations against Schleiermacher (those of Bruce McCormack and Thomas Curran) are overcome.

Though the extra Calvinisticum has played an historically important role for Christology, the doctrine has been criticized not only by Lutherans and modern Christologies ‘from below’ but by some Reformed thinkers as well. This article examines the place of the extra in dogmatic thinking about the incarnation: specifically, Karl Barth's critical response to his own tradition. After examining the differences between Lutheran and Reformed construals of the relationship of the Logos asarkos to the Logos ensarkos I take up Barth's views on the extra, which over the course of his career moved from enthusiastic affirmation to a sharp critique. Finally, I suggest that Barth's mature Christology retains the best of both Protestant positions by correcting a critical inconsistency in Reformed thought. He does not reject the doctrine of the Logos asarkos, but he does suggest a way in which this is related to the life of the Logos ensarkos that marginalizes the former. Barth is right not to discard the extra, but also that it has been misused in how it is deployed in dogmatic theology.

Protestant theology at the beginning of the twentieth century, as represented by such influential figures as Johannes Weiss, Albert Schweitzer, Franz Over-beck, and later Rudolf Bultmann, asked what was no longer believable in the Gospel talk of heaven given the modern frame of reference. A century later the opposite question invites at least equal attention: what is no longer believable in the modern frame of reference given the Gospel talk of heaven? Calvin’s references to the real (or true) presence of Christ's heavenly life as "virtus" invite a conversation with computer talk of virtuality that illumines by contrast the current task of dogmatic theology in addressing what is heard today in the Gospel message as "the real world".

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.

The German translation of the Orthodox Dogmatics of the Romanian theologian, Fr Dumitru Staniloae (d. 1993), was completed in 1995. This article sets it in the context of Staniloae’s life and work: his unremitting labour in making the Fathers available in Romanian, and his devotion to the greatest Byzantine theologian, Maximos the Confessor. Maximos’ emphasis on the cosmic dimension of the human is given full expression in Staniloae, as is the hesychasts’ stress on experience as a fundamental mode of theology. It provides a comprehensive example of what the Orthodox hope of a ‘neo-Patristic synthesis’ might amount to.

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

Sergei Bulgakov was the most prominent thinker of the Russian Silver Age that immediately preceded the Revolutions of 1917, and after his emigration to Paris in 1925, he went on to become the most original, and probably the most widely known, Russian philosopher and theologian living in the west. He was born the son of an Orthodox priest, and the heir of distinguished priestly lineages on both maternal and paternal sides of his family. He grew up with a strong attachment to nature, and a spiritual orientation that he described as “a child's Christian ‘pantheism’.” He began seminary training at the age of 13, but within a few years had lost his faith in God, and shifted his allegiance to Marxism and the longing for “an earthly paradise,” yielding, as he later put it, to “the temptation to worship man.” He eventually became an economist holding a prestigious chair in agricultural economics — adapting Marx to the largely agrarian economy of Russia — and a politician who served in the Second Duma, or Russian parliament, of 1906. Along with many of the Russian intelligentsia, Bulgakov — having published in 1900 a major work called Capitalism and Agriculture — became disillusioned by the poor fit of Marxist economics to Russian reality, and disenchanted with the political irresponsibility of the left. Together with N. Berdyaev, he edited in 1909 an influential collection of articles called Vekhi or Landmarks: A Collection of Essays on the Russian Intelligentsia, which sought to articulate a vision for Russia more indigenous than the failed revolutionary politics. Published in 1912, The Philosophy of Economy represents Bulgakov's major work as a philosopher, finalizes his break with Marxist political economy, and establishes the philosophical grounds for his later work as a theologian. Drawing upon both Orthodox mysticism and German Idealism, especially Schelling, he develops a deeply ecological vision of creation as natura naturans, as revealing divine energies, as divine wisdom (Sophia) at work. Meanwhile, through his experiences of numinous beauty in nature and art, and a mysterious visit to the hermitage of a staretz or spiritual elder — all of these (nature, art, and Church) being vital elements of his later concept of Sophia — he recovered his Orthodox faith, being ordained a priest 1918. He was exiled from Russia by the Bolsheviks in 1922, and continued his academic life at St. Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris, as both Professor of Dogmatic Theology and Founding Dean, until 1944 when, according to those present, he died as a saint. Keywords: Bulgakov, Sergei Nikolaevich (1871–1944); prominent thinker, of the Russian silver age; Russian philosopher, theologian, living in the west; vekhi or landmarks: a collection of essays … intelligentsia; the philosophy of economy, Bulgakov's major work; orthodox mysticism and German idealism; ecological vision of creation, as natura naturans; Bulgakov's the unfading light, manifest in “cosmodicy”; ancient truths of orthodoxy, prism of modern culture

Karl Rahner has been aptly called the 20th century's “Church Father” and “quiet mover of the Roman Catholic Church.” Born in Freiburg (Breisgau), Germany, Rahner entered the Society of Jesus (Jesuits) in 1922 and was ordained priest in 1934. After advanced studies in Freiburg (where he attended seminars taught by Martin Heidegger) and Innsbruck, he taught theology at Innsbruck (1949–1964). During this period, he was appointed one of the official theological experts (periti) of the Second Vatican Council (1962–1965) — a council whose theological outlook he profoundly influenced. He then became successor to Romano Guardini (d. 1968) in the Chair of Christianity and the Philosophy of Religion at the University of Munich (1964–1967) and was later appointed professor of dogmatic theology at the University of Munster (1967–1971). After retiring from university work, he lived at the Jesuit writers' house in Munich (1971–1981) and afterwards in Innsbruck, and continued his unrelenting worldwide lecturing, writing, and pastoral activity until his death a few weeks after his 80th birthday. Keywords: Rahner, Karl (1904–1984); Karl Rahner, “church father” and “quiet mover… ”; “supernatural existential”; “the immanent trinity which is the economic trinity”; christ, the high point of God's self-communication

A German systematic theologian who focused on the work of the Holy Spirit in the church, Heribert Muhlen is regarded as one of the most significant Roman Catholic theologians of the 20th century. Born April 27, 1927, he received a doctorate in philosophy in 1951 and a doctorate in theology in 1962. He was ordained in 1955, attended Vatican II as adviser to Cardinal Lorenz Jaeger, and served as professor of Dogmatic Theology and History at the Theological Faculty in Paderborn from 1964 to 1997. Keywords: Muhlen, Heribert (1927–2006); German systematic theologian, on work of the holy spirit; doctrine and person of the holy spirit, not one doctrine among others; Muhlen, theology and praxis, independent of religious movements

American Jesuit theologian, and political theorist, John C. Murray was born and raised in Queens, New York. He attended a Jesuit high school in Manhattan and entered the New York Province of the Society of Jesus when he was 16. Over the next 13 years, he studied at Weston, Boston, and Woodstock Colleges. After he was ordained in 1933, he studied sacred theology at the Pontifical Gregorian University in Rome and received his doctorate in 1937. He then returned to Woodstock College, where he taught dogmatic theology and edited the popular Jesuit periodical Theological Studies for the remainder of his life. Keywords: Murray, John Courtney (1904–1967); American Jesuit theologian, political theorist; nature of religious pluralism; dignitatis humanae, defining feature of Murray's legacy

Vladimir Lossky was important as an Orthodox theologian, philosopher, and educator; his Mystical Theology of the Eastern Church remains perhaps the classic articulation of Orthodox theology in the 20th century. Characteristic of his writing, it is an achievement of both intellect and spirituality. Born in St. Petersburg, Russia, the son of the highly regarded philosopher and professor at the University of St. Petersburg, Nicholas O. Lossky, Vladimir began his studies at the University of St. Petersburg, studying patristic theology with Lev Karasavine and Meister Eckhart under Ivan Grevs. He was soon forced from Russia in 1922, along with his family, by the Bolsheviks, but before his exile, he attended the trial of one of the first martyrs to the Russian Revolution, Metropolitan Benjamin, and the sight of the people's devotion to their martyred bishop nourished him with a powerful and lasting vision of the church as the mystical body of Christ. He continued his education in Prague, where he studied patristic theology with N. P. Kondakov, and then in Paris at the Sorbonne, where he studied medieval philosophy with Etienne Gilson, whose friendship he enjoyed throughout his life. Lossky remained an exile in Paris for the rest of his life, teaching dogmatic theology at St. Denys Institute of Orthodox Theology, which he also served as its first Dean. In addition to Gilson, he was close to a number of other Roman Catholic theologians as well, including Danielou, de Lubac, Congar, and Bouyer. Despite his strong commitment to ecumenical dialogue, Lossky's work was by no means a merely historical exposition of eastern theology, but a search for theological truth beyond cultural and historical alignments. His academic studies proceeded along two tracks, Eastern patristics (with especially strong influences from St. Dionsius the Areopagite and St. Gregory Palamas) and western medieval mysticism (especially Meister Eckhart, the subject of his doctoral dissertation), both well suited to explore the viability of eastern theology for the west; his use of French for his academic writings, rather than his native Russian, further underscores his commitment to this project. As suggested by the title of his magnum opus, Lossky saw the mystical orientation of theology in the Eastern Church as vitally important for western theology as well. Theology must entail not “assimilating the mystery to our mode of understanding,” but rather “an inner transformation of spirit, enabling us to experience it mystically.” Theology and mysticism are not opposed, but “support and complete each other.” Thus, “if the mystical experience is a personal working out of the content of the common faith, theology is an expression, for the profit of all, of that which can be experienced by everyone” (Lossky 1976, 8f.). The genuine task for theology, then, is union with God, theosis, and it must therefore entail apophaticism, i.e. the view that this highest knowing is actually an “unknowing” going beyond our knowledge of created things, often by means of paradox and antinomy, and leading us to an experience of the uncreated. At the same time, positive or kataphatic knowledge can be a vehicle for this, since all creation is saturated with the divine energies and sustained by them. “Pure nature,” somehow standing apart from a divine grace that would be supernaturally added, is “a philosophical fiction” (Lossky 1976, 101). Thus, the eastern distinction between the divine essence and the divine energies is crucial here. Lossky also emphasizes another distinction, that between person and nature, first of all to emphasize the three persons of the Holy Trinity over what he feels is an undue western emphasis upon the divine nature that ultimately renders God an abstraction. Here too, Lossky insists not just on the unknowability of the divine essence, but as a corollary, he rejects the western understanding that sees creation as a realization of what exists eternally in the divine nature. Rather, creation is rooted in the divine will, and the logoi that are exhibited in all creation are freely willed intentions of God, not “forms” following of necessity from the divine nature. Second, and following from this, human beings must be understood not just according to universal human nature, but as unrepeatable persons who are radically free even from their own nature. Indeed, fallenness itself can be seen as a forfeiting of the freedom and uniqueness of personhood, and a regression into the generic and necessary element of human nature. To renounce this resultant “selfhood,” with the help of divine grace, is thus to restore a “likeness” to God to the “image” of him that we always already are. The work of Lossky is sometimes associated with that of Fr. George Florovsky, and together they were responsible for inaugurating the “neo-patristic synthesis” that became the model for much Orthodox theology of the 20th century. His son, Nicolas V. Lossky, is professor at the University of Paris-Nanterre as well as St. Sergius Institute, and Vladimir Lossky had the rare distinction of having articles on his work written by both his father and his son. Keywords: Lossky, Vladimir N. (1903–1958); orthodox theologian, philosopher; mystical orientation of theology, in eastern church; union with God, theosis; the divine essence and the divine energies

The belief in the vampire and the whole family of demons has its origin in the animism, spiritism, or personification of the barbarian, who, unable to distinguish the objective from the subjective, ascribes good and evil influences and all natural phenomena to good and evil spirits. Mr Conway remarks of this vampire belief that "it is, perhaps, the most formidable survival of demonic superstition now existing in the world." Under the names of vampire, were-wolf, man-wolf, nightmare, night-demon-in the Illyrian tongue oupires, or leeches; in modern Greek broucolaques, and in our common tongue ghosts, each country having its own peculiar designation-the superstitious of the ancient and modern world, of Chaldea and Babylonia, Persia, Egypt, and Syria, of Illyria, Poland, Turkey, Servia, Germany, England, Central Africa, New England, and the islands of the Malay and Polynesian archipelagoes, designate the spirits which leave the tomb, generally in the night, to t'orment the living. The character, purpose, and manner of the vampire manifestations depend, like its designation, upon environment and the plane of culture. All primitive peoples have believed in the existence of good and evil spirits holding a middle place between men and gods. Calmet lays down in most explicit terms, as he was bound to do by the canons of his church, the doctrine of angels and demons as a matter of dogmatic theology.