Search

Over the course of his life Goethe felt constantly challenged to determine the relation of his own religious and philosophical beliefs to those of the Christian revealed religion. The resulting reflections, expressed in many of his works, letters and conversations, fall into distinct periods or phases that this article will attempt to analyze. Towards the end of his life, however, Goethe came to the conclusion that the Christian religion, owing to numerous apparent anomalies and contradictions in its beliefs and doctrines, can never be rationally comprehended, though it can be known to reflect incommensurable eternal verities of the spiritual life of every individual and community of individuals. Upon this basis, Goethe will be shown to have developed a philosophy of an actually existing ideal Kingdom of God embracing all cultures and their associated revealed religions.

This article deals with the infl uence of F. Schleiermacher’s ideas on Möhler’s ecclesiology (of the time when he was writing the Unity in the Church). In this comparison, most interesting is Christian Faith, the main work on dogmatics by F. Schleiermacher (first edition 1821‒1822). Unfortunately, this work is not translated into Russian and has not been studied in Russia. The bulk of literature and mentions of F. Schleiermacher draw on his earlier work, On religion: Speeches to its cultured despisers (1799). However, Schleiermacher’s views underwent considerable change during the twenty-year period between these works. Despite the fact that the mentions of Schleiermacher are very few in the Unity, it was already Möhler’s contemporaries who criticised him for violating the purity of the Catholic doctrine under the infl uence of Schleiermacher’s philosophy. Certain parallels in their reasong are pointed to by the present-day scholars of Möhler as well. Both theologians belonged to the period of Romanticism, and its ideological content and principles of thinking refl ect in their texts. Beside the shared cultural and historical horizon, they are also brought close to each other by the situation having developed in the Catholic and Protestant theologies of that time, i.e. a certain stance against the receding theology of Enlightenment, appeal to the internal religious experience and necessity to combine it with Christian ecclesiology. The issue of Church comes to be a challenge of that time. Against the background of this context, shared and valued by both of them, the diff erences between them conditioned by their diff erent confessions become more prominent. Virtually all meaningful statements made by Möhler about the Holy Spirit repeat what Schleiermacher said about the Christian common spirit (Gemeingeist). This determines his understanding of Tradition, of the unity of Church and of the Christian faith as a “new life”. This being said, A. Möhler rejects and fi ercely criticises Schleiermacher’s identifi cation of the Holy Spirit with the Christian “common spirit” as pantheism, and also the idea of the invisible Church which allowed Schleiermacher to reject the institutional unity of the historical Church and the defi niteness of Tradition.

In this article, by referring to the foundations of Royce's thought, his theology is explained and analyzed. Influenced, on the one hand, by personal idealism, Royce construes man as a part of cosmic process that achieves the goals of living and objective truth (God), and on the other hand, points out that every human being has his own unique talent. Thus in spite of absolute idealism, he attaches importance to individual differences. In his view, idealism has the potential to provide a new interpretation of Christian theology; so it comes terms with the active life of contemporary man. In Royce's philosophy it is possible to provide a model for the interaction between science and religion; because he distinguishes the everyday sensory experience and organized scientific experience. He considers all possible and actual experiences as objects of the absolute divine mind that will be actualized by human’s scientific endeavor in the context of inventions and discoveries. Royce even maintains that the loyal commitment of scientists and business owners to society as a kind of religious experience (in the broadest sense) and thereby offers a new image of the invisible church.

The paper is intended to contribute to the history of protestant ecclesiology and deals with such notions as invisible church, ecumenism, “branch theory”. These ideas were explicitly highlighted, formulated and rejected by the Russian Orthodox Church on the Jubilee Bishops’ Council in 2000. With the aim to facilitate the potential theological dialogue with Protestants, the paper examines historical and theological context of these three notions, their backgrounds, origins of terms used by their authors, as well as their implications. The paper traces the development of the notion of invisible Church. It discusses the first use of the term ecumenical in the Protestant meaning by Nicolaus von Zinzendorf. Further, it shows the reasons why Pennsylvanian General Synods of the 18th century were forerunners of the 20th century ecumenical conferences and why they were first called “ecumenical”. As regards the “branch theory”, the paper discusses possible negative consequences of its employment.

The imaginary is a "spiritual infrastructure" that provides for the basis and the foundation of the entire social life. It is like a file rouge, that goes through the society and, to quote Gilbert Durand, it can be defined as an anthropological constant. The imaginary can thus be considered as a substratum of the social life and may be called "invisible church", a church which is able to re-enchant a disenchanted world. Nowadays, the contemporary tribal mimicry is just an example of this attitude. We could argue that the postmodern sociality is the contemporary form of an antique "communion of saints".

Starting with the laying to rest of George Tyrrell's body in an Anglican grave, outside the bounds of the Catholic Church, this article considers how Tyrrell could yet understand himself to be within the Church, within the body of Christ. Tyrrell developed a distinction between the visible and invisible Church in such a way that a person like himself could be included within the latter. In this, Tyrrell's theology anticipated later ideas of the anonymous Christian and the Church as sacrament, his thinking incorporated within the body of more orthodox, conciliar theology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Histories of Early Modern religion in Europe typically contrast the activities of ordained theologians with those of laity. The thought and writings of the former usually constitute “theology” and those of the latter “piety.” The result has long been a divided history. Confessional church historians have written histories that were essentially genealogies of (male) officer holders, while scholars of folklore, culture or literature analyzed the contributions of laity. Since the so-called cultural turn, the contributions of laity as organizers, transmitters and patrons of Early Modern religious movements are being recognized. What has been less studied are the intellectual achievements of laity, many of whom possessed deep knowledge of theology, history, and ancient languages and played important roles in Early Modern religious history. This article provides an overview of the main issues and the development of lay theology in the period and argues for increased study of the phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Amidst the plethora of approaches to ecumenical dialogue and church reunion over the last century, a common theme has been the depreciation of the classic Protestant distinction between the “visible„ and “invisible„ church. Often seen as privileging an abstract predestinarianism over the concrete lives and structures of church communities and underwriting a complacency about division that deprives Christians of any motive to ecumenical endeavor, the concept of the “invisible„ church has been widely marginalized in favor of a renewed focus on the “visible„ church as the true church. However, I argue that this stress on visible unity creates a pressure toward institutional forms of unity that ultimately privilege Roman Catholic ecclesiologies at the expense of Protestant ones, and thus fails of its ecumenical promise. Renewed attention to Reformational understandings of the relationship between divine grace and human action and the centrality and uniqueness of Christ as the foundation of the church, I argue, dispels some misunderstandings of the church’s “invisibility„ and demonstrates the indispensability of the concept. I argue that this Reformational framework, which refuses to accept the empirical divisions of the Church as definitive and summons us to an ecumenism that belongs to the church’s sanctification, provides the best theological ground for ecumenical endeavor.

In this article I argue that the black church tradition was born under the conditions of slavery more than two centuries ago for the purpose of proclaiming an alternative understanding of God and humanity from that of slave-holding Christians. As the socio-political conditions changed, however, the black churches revised their thought and practices in order to address the new challenges their people were facing. Yet they sought always to remain faithful to the liberating faith they had inherited from their ancestors. Consequently, this article classifies and discusses five types of theology in that tradition with variations within each of them namely: (1) the invisible theology of enslaved Africans; (2) the public theology of free Negroes in their independent churches; (3) the public theology of Martin Luther King, Jr.; (4) black theology in the theological academy; and (5) womanist theology in the theological academy. The article ends with a brief conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Amidst the plethora of approaches to ecumenical dialogue and church reunion over the last century, a common theme has been the depreciation of the classic Protestant distinction between the "visible" and "invisible" church. Often seen as privileging an abstract predestinarianism over the concrete lives and structures of church communities and underwriting a complacency about division that deprives Christians of any motive to ecumenical endeavor, the concept of the "invisible" church has been widely marginalized in favor of a renewed focus on the "visible" church as the true church. However, I argue that this stress on visible unity creates a pressure toward institutional forms of unity that ultimately privilege Roman Catholic ecclesiologies at the expense of Protestant ones, and thus fails of its ecumenical promise. Renewed attention to Reformational understandings of the relationship between divine grace and human action and the centrality and uniqueness of Christ as the foundation of the church, I argue, dispels some misunderstandings of the church's "invisibility" and demonstrates the indispensability of the concept. I argue that this Reformational framework, which refuses to accept the empirical divisions of the Church as definitive and summons us to an ecumenism that belongs to the church's sanctification, provides the best theological ground for ecumenical endeavor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]