DOCSLIB.ORG

Some Aspects of the Theological Legacy of Karl Rahner

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Some Aspects of the Theological Legacy of Karl Rahner Declan Marmion Some Aspects of the Theological Legacy of Karl Rahner Introduction The German termvielseitig – versatile or many-sided – certainly applies to Karl Rahner. The word might be literally translated as ‘many-paged’, and this epithet too applies to Rahner, as many theology students can attest. His literary output was prodigious – even by 1974 it had reached almost 3,000 publications, including translations. A distinguished Irish theologian once said of him that in all his voluminous works, Rahner has really only one thing to say – but it is maddeningly difficult to name what that one thing is! Were I to venture a guess, I would point to Rahner’s repeated attempts to focus on the core of the Christian faith, a method that does not lead to a reduction of the essentials but, in the words of Herbert Vorgrimler, to ‘a concentration of the plurality into a few very basic thoughts,’ key terms (Schlüsselbegriffe), or better, key experiences (Schlüsselerlebnisse), of which the most fundamental is the experience of the self-communication of God.1 However, in this essay I will not focus on the experience of God in Rahner, though hopefully it will be apparent how Rahner’s ‘mystagogical’ style finds 1 ‘Seine [Rahner’s] Methode … ist die der Konzentration der Vielfalt auf ganz wenige Grundgedanken, wie er sagt, auf Schlüsselbegriffe oder noch besser auf Schlüsselerlebnisse. Der Grundgedanke dieser Theologie oderdas Schlüsselerlebnis ist, nachlesbar bei Rahner selber, die Erfahrung Gottes.’ Herbert Vorgrimler, ‘Gotteserfahrung im Alltag: Der Beitrag Karl Rahners zu Spiritualität und Mystik,’ in Albert Raffelt, ed., Karl Rahner in Erinnerung, Freiburger Akademieschriften, Band 8. (Düsseldorf: Patmos, 1994), 102. 4 Declan Marmion its way into all of his theology. Instead, I want to show, in the first part, how there is a congruence between the ‘spirit’ of Vatican II and Rahner’s own way of theologising, and that this ‘spirit’ betokens a theological style, a style of relationship and discourse that is as germane today as it was in Rahner’s time. In the second part, I survey some characteristics of the cur- rent postmodern theological scene and offer a Rahner-inspired response to both its constructive challenges as well as its less salutary side. Rahner and Vatican II For a good part of his life, Rahner worked against a backdrop of change in the Church. Vatican II was the benchmark here, and he strove to promote its reception whenever and wherever possible. Rahner saw the Council as a watershed marking the transition from a European and western Church to a world-Church. Moreover, Vatican II wished to speak in a different idiom, moving away from a traditionally defensive neo-scholastic theol- ogy towards a more missionary style aiming to speak to those for whom Christianity had become alien. For the so-called ‘new churches’ in Africa and Asia, adaptation to local cultures was endorsed. This is a style that listens to various viewpoints anxious to find common ground with the other. There was also a positive appraisal of the great world religions2 and a stress on the universal and effective saving will of God. Such optimism about salvation – a theme dear to Rahner – meant that even those who 2 While this is true, Rahner did not always pay the same attention to the particulari- ties and nuances of other religious traditions as he did to his own. See Francis X. Clooney, ‘Rahner beyond Rahner: A Comparative Theologian’s Reflections on Theological Investigations18,’ in Paul G. Crowley, ed., Rahner beyond Rahner: A Great Theologian Encounters the Pacific Rim(Lanham, Maryland: Sheed & Ward/Rowman & Littlefield, 2005), 3–21. Some Aspects of the Theological Legacy of Karl Rahner 5 seek the unknown God in shadows and images are not far from the true God, who wills all to be saved.3 Rahner thus anticipated many of the tensions facing Christians in an increasingly pluralistic and fragmented society. While much of his writing focussed on the intra-ecclesial sphere and the need for structural change in the Church,4 he still had to negotiate his way through various polari- ties. Thus we have his plea for a better balance between official teaching authority, on the one hand, and the hierarchy of truths and legitimate academic freedom, on the other. Other tensions included attempting to reconcile the universality of salvation with the particularity of the Christ event, and, in a similar vein, the relationship between anonymous and explicit Christianity. Throughout such reflections, Rahner points to the transcendent nature of the human spirit, to the human person, who, by virtue of his or her dynamism and transcendent orientation, is referred to God in every act of knowledge and love. ‘Whether they are consciously aware of it or not, whether they are open to this truth or suppresses it, a person’s whole spiritual and intellectual existence is orientated towards a holy mystery which is the basis of their being.’5 Not that Rahner’s project is a thoroughgoing anthropocentric one – it is not simply the human quest for meaning and fulfilment that culminates in God. It is God who seeks out humankind with the offer of grace – a grace that is not limited to the confines of an ecclesiastical institution, but is universal. It is simplistic to pigeon-hole Rahner as belonging to a ‘liberal’ or ‘pro- gressive’ camp. His understanding of faith is more subtle. Steeped in the Christian tradition and the teachings of the early Church, he used these as a resource for renewing the present. He practised the method of ressource- 3 Karl Rahner, ‘The Abiding Significance of Vatican II,’ Theological Investigations 20, trans. Edward Quinn (London: Darton, Longman & Todd, 1981), 100. Henceforth all references to the Investigations will be abbreviated to TI. 4 Karl Rahner, The Shape of the Church to Come, trans. Edward Quinn (London: SPCK, 1974). 5 Karl Rahner, ‘The Need for a “Short Formula” of Christian Faith,’TI 9, 117–26: 122 (translation amended). 6 Declan Marmion ment and aggiornamento characteristic of the Council.6 Ressourcement ‘advo- cated skipping over what was currently in place to retrieve from the past something more appropriate or more authentic.’7 An example from Rahner is his work on the history and theology of penance in order to retrieve certain ‘forgotten truths,’ for example, the variety of sacramental practice in the early Church, all with a view to inject new life into the sacrament.8 Yet Rahner was not one to merely repeat the tradition. Tradition is not some fixed, static entity merely to be received and preserved but requires ever-new articulation. Every age has its own questions, he would say, so we cannot expect the Fathers to answer our questions for us. In relation to doctrine, Rahner pursued the search for new and creative ways of formulating Christian faith, a process, he maintained, of trial and error in the development of doctrine. He believed the traditional dogmatic language of the Church was no longer intelligible to many Christians, particularly in the more secularised cultures of the West. Rahner never viewed doctrinal pluralism and the plurality of religions as developments to be lamented but to be welcomed. The underlying issue here is how the Church deals with change. The challenge to theology, in Rahner’s view, will always be to acknowledge two basic tenets of Christian faith: the uni- versal salvific will of God, and that this salvation comes through God in Christ alone. Moreover, he argued that provisional theological formulae were more appropriate in terms of furthering our faith understanding than authoritative universal definitions. The issue is how authentic doctrinal 6 For example, the interventions of Melkite Patriarch Maximos IV at the Council were, in the words of Vatican II expert John O’Malley, ‘the most daringly progressive because he was the most radically conservative. His interventions consistently invoked ancient traditions of the church to challenge the status quo.’ John W. O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II? (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2008), 292. 7 O’Malley, What Happened at Vatican II?, 300–1. 8 Karl Rahner, ‘Forgotten Truths Concerning the Sacrament of Penance,’ TI 2, 135–74. Some Aspects of the Theological Legacy of Karl Rahner 7 development can take place in the context of a pluralism of global theolo- gies and competing views that cannot be adequately synthesised.9 Rahner looked to Vatican II as the inspiration for this theological rather than dogmatic approach. The Council made no formal dogmatic definitions and its teaching is to be understood positively as the expression of ‘instructions’ or ‘appeals’ rather than in the context of errors to be con- demned, as tended to be the case with previous councils.10 It is a style less autocratic and more collaborative, ‘more inclined to reconciliation with human culture than to alienation from it, more inclined to see goodness than sin, more inclined to speaking words of friendship and encourage- ment than of indictment.’11 The (Catholic) Church has often had diffi- culty coming to terms with the historical, partial, and fragile character of Christian truth claims. The desire for a secure and certain foundation of knowledge overlooks the fact that all human knowing is intimately con- nected with such factors as: historical location, political contexts, ideo- logical allegiances, conceptual frameworks, psychological assumptions and linguistic practices. Such factors undermine the claim that there is an unchanging meaning of dogmas that can somehow be discovered outside of history.12 Traditionally, the church dealt with this question by distin- guishing between the truth, substance or meaning of a dogma and the 9 Following John Courtney Murray who maintained that ‘development of doctrine was the issue underlying all issues at Vatican II, John O’Malley draws attention to ‘a great cultural shift that took place within the Council: its awareness that the “modern world” thinks historically and its realization that the Council somehow had to think and speak in a historically conscious style.’ John W.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • The National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion
    College Theology Society The Human in a Dehumanizing World: Re-Examining Theological Anthropology and Its Implications Sixty-Seventh Annual Convention in conjunction with The National Association of Baptist Professors of Religion Thursday, June 3 – Saturday, June 5, 2021 **ALL TIMES CENTRAL** Thursday Evening Opening 6:00-6:45pm (CDT) Online Auditorium Welcome, Business Meeting, Award Presentations Mary Doak University of San Diego (CA) President, College Theology Society Thursday Plenary 7:00-8:30pm (CDT) Online Auditorium ID: Convention Co-Chair and Session Moderator Jessica Coblentz, Saint Mary’s College (IN) Love for the Annihilated: A Black Theological Reading of Angela’s Memorial Memorial Andrew L. Prevot Boston College Andrew L. Prevot is an associate professor in the Department of Theology at Boston College. His research interests include: prayer, spirituality, and mystical theology; political, liberation, and black theology; phenomenology and continental philosophy of religion; and Catholic systematic and fundamental theology. He is the author of Thinking Prayer: Theology and Spirituality Amid the Crises of Modernity (Notre Dame Press, 2015), and a number of article and book chapters in the fields of liberation theology, political theology, and philosophical theology. Dr Prevot’s address belongs to a burgeoning field of scholarship that addresses current social issues by drawing on Christian mystical sources. In particular, it argues that Angela of Foligno's struggle with an inner sense of personal nothingness resembles the psychological burdens of many suffering under anti-blackness and other dehumanizing regimes. It further contends that God's loving response to Angela points to the sort of love that is needed to address such injustices.
    [Show full text]
  • REVIEW Peter Ochs Another Reformation: Postliberal Christianity and the Jews (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 288 Pp
    Studies in Christian-Jewish Relations REVIEW Peter Ochs Another Reformation: Postliberal Christianity and the Jews (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2011), 288 pp. Christina Smerick, Greenville College Peter Ochs, a Jewish theologian long involved in Jewish- Christian relations, uses a pragmatic philosophical framework, based on Charles Peirce, and his own critique of the dyadic structure of modernist thought, to examine postliberal Chris- tian theologians, both in the US and Great Britain, with regard to “non-supersessionism.” Supersessionism is the doctrinal teaching arguing that Christianity is a new covenant between God and humanity, which replaces the covenant found in Torah between God and the Jewish people. Postliberal thought, Ochs argues, in its rejection of dyadic thinking, also rejects supersessionism as unnecessarily binary and undeserv- ing of a full picture of the God of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jesus. He focuses on the theologians George Lindbeck, Rob- ert Jenson, Stanley Hauerwas, John Howard Yoder, Daniel Hardy, and David Ford. Ochs’ main point is that postliberal theologians hold that the Church need not turn from the Gospels or from the history of church doctrine in order to reject supersessionism. Ochs at- tributes this sea change in understanding Christian doctrine to a new, third epoch in the history of Judeo-Christian relations. This epoch, that of “postliberalism,” is one of “relationality that invites both critical reason and a reaffirmation of scriptur- al revelation” (p. 4). He approaches a fuller articulation of this epoch logically, albeit via a “theo-logic” that refuses exclusion and binary oppositions in favor of a pattern of thought that seeks to be reparative and thus guided by a “relational (and thus non-dyadic) logic of inquiry” (p.
    [Show full text]
  • Do This in Memory of Me‖: the Genealogy and Theological
    ―DO THIS IN MEMORY OF ME‖: THE GENEALOGY AND THEOLOGICAL APPROPRIATIONS OF MEMORY IN THE WORK OF JOHANN BAPTIST METZ A Dissertation Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Notre Dame in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy by Candace Kristina McLean J Matthew Ashley, Director Graduate Program in Theology Notre Dame, Indiana April 2012 © Copyright 2012 Candace Kristina McLean ―DO THIS IN MEMORY OF ME‖: THE GENEALOGY AND THEOLOGICAL APPROPRIATIONS OF MEMORY IN THE WORK OF JOHANN BAPTIST METZ Abstract by Candace Kristina McLean Many theologians have been influenced by Johann Metz‘s theology of memory. To examine Metz‘s sources and how others expand upon his work, I propose a two-part thesis. Part one arises from critical appraisal of sources upon which Metz relies in formulating his idea of memory. While the thinkers Metz draws upon are secular Jewish philosophers, Metz appropriates key notions in specifically theological ways by linking them with the memoria passionis of Jesus Christ and the Jewish religious roots of memory. Furthermore, Metz‘s apocalyptic/eschatological hope for the future differs from secular and postmodern hopes for something surprising, new, and redemptive because Metz advocates real, faith-filled content for these ideas. Part two of the thesis is critical-constructive. Metz‘s idea of memory has the potential to be more than an anthropological category. While reticent to speak of God‘s memory, anamnestic reason becomes a way of speaking about God‘s work of salvation for and with humanity. This becomes clearer when his idea of memory is considered in conjunction with the theology of God‘s memory in the writings of Latin American Candace Kristina McLean liberation theologian Gustavo Gutiérrez.
    [Show full text]
  • BEFORE the ORIGINAL POSITION the Neo-Orthodox Theology of the Young John Rawls
    BEFORE THE ORIGINAL POSITION The Neo-Orthodox Theology of the Young John Rawls Eric Gregory ABSTRACT This paper examines a remarkable document that has escaped critical at- tention within the vast literature on John Rawls, religion, and liberalism: Rawls’s undergraduate thesis, “A Brief Inquiry into the Meaning of Sin and Faith: An Interpretation Based on the Concept of Community” (1942). The thesis shows the extent to which a once regnant version of Protestant the- ology has retreated into seminaries and divinity schools where it now also meets resistance. Ironically, the young Rawls rejected social contract liber- alism for reasons that anticipate many of the claims later made against him by secular and religious critics. The thesis and Rawls’s late unpublished remarks on religion and World War II offer a new dimension to his intellec- tual biography. They show the significance of his humanist response to the moral impossibility of political theology. Moreover, they also reveal a kind of Rawlsian piety marginalized by contemporary debates over religion and liberalism. KEY WORDS: John Rawls, community, liberalism, religion, political theology, public reason PROTESTANT THEOLOGIAN REINHOLD NIEBUHR DIED IN 1971. In that same year, philosopher John Rawls published his groundbreaking work, A The- ory of Justice. These two events symbolically express transformations in American intellectual and political culture that remain significant today. In the academy, religious defenders of a liberal consensus had been chal- lenged by ascendant secular liberalisms and emergent religious voices critical of liberalism of any kind. Parallel developments in the political culture had begun to see the fracturing of coalitions that transcended di- verse religious and secular commitments in order to support democratic institutions and practices.
    [Show full text]
  • Philosophical Perspectives on Science, Religion, and Ethics
    Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers Volume 16 Issue 2 Article 15 4-1-1999 Nancey Murphy, ANGLO-AMERICAN POSTMODERNITY: PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND ETHICS Merold Westphal Follow this and additional works at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy Recommended Citation Westphal, Merold (1999) "Nancey Murphy, ANGLO-AMERICAN POSTMODERNITY: PHILOSOPHICAL PERSPECTIVES ON SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND ETHICS," Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers: Vol. 16 : Iss. 2 , Article 15. DOI: 10.5840/faithphil199916229 Available at: https://place.asburyseminary.edu/faithandphilosophy/vol16/iss2/15 This Book Review is brought to you for free and open access by the Journals at ePLACE: preserving, learning, and creative exchange. It has been accepted for inclusion in Faith and Philosophy: Journal of the Society of Christian Philosophers by an authorized editor of ePLACE: preserving, learning, and creative exchange. 276 Faith and Philosophy explanatory power is greater than that of atheism. But as John Hick has highlighted in his work, religious experience is itself something that both the religious believer and atheist must explain. Another possibility is that the author decided not to address both religious experience and the eviden­ tial problem because of his desire to produce a book suitable also for a meta­ physics course. (See my comments below on the book's suitability as a text.) 2. See e.g., R. B. Braithwaite, "An Empiricist's View of the Nature of Religious Belief," in Christian Ethics and Moral Philosophy, ed. Ian T. Ramsey (London: SCM Press, 1966), pp. 53-73; and possibly D. Z. Phillips, The Concept of Prayer, (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1966).
    [Show full text]
  • Study Guide To
    Liberal Theology: A Radical Vision Study Guide Fortress Press Liberal Theology: A Radical Vision Study Guide by Peter C. Hodgson Introduction to the Study Guide This book calls for a revival of liberal theology with a radical vision because the author believes that such a theology offers deeper insight into the meaning and truth of Christian faith for today than all the other options. Why “liberal theology”? Liberal theology is one of the great heritages of 19th and early 20th century religious thought, but today it has fallen into disrepute. This is partly because of the sustained attack on liberalism in politics and on the part of religious conservatism. The attack created a caricature of what liberalism is about in both politics and religion. The word “liberal” comes from the Latin libertas, and it refers to something that is “fitted for freedom” and “makes for freedom.” Liberalism is at the heart of our democracy, which is premised on the assumption that every human being is free and equal and has certain fundamental rights that governments are obliged to advance and defend. Liberalism in Christian religion gets at the heart of what God has done and is doing on behalf of human beings: setting them free from the bondage of sin and evil so that they may enjoy the “glorious freedom” of God’s children. Why a “radical vision”? There is something intrinsically radical about theology because it purports to make assertions about God, about the ultimate meaning and purpose of things, and it offers strong judgments about human behavior from a prophetic perspective.
    [Show full text]
  • Roman Catholic Liturgical Renewal Forty-Five Years After Sacrosanctum Concilium: an Assessment KEITH F
    Roman Catholic Liturgical Renewal Forty-Five Years after Sacrosanctum Concilium: An Assessment KEITH F. PECKLERS, S.J. Next December 4 will mark the forty-fifth anniversary of the promulgation of the Second Vatican Council’s Constitution on the Liturgy, Sacrosanctum Concilium, which the Council bishops approved with an astounding majority: 2,147 in favor and 4 opposed. The Constitution was solemnly approved by Pope Paul VI—the first decree to be promulgated by the Ecumenical Council. Vatican II was well aware of change in the world—probably more so than any of the twenty ecumenical councils that preceded it.1 It had emerged within the complex social context of the Cuban missile crisis, a rise in Communism, and military dictatorships in various corners of the globe. President John F. Kennedy had been assassinated only twelve days prior to the promulgation of Sacrosanctum Concilium.2 Despite those global crises, however, the Council generally viewed the world positively, and with a certain degree of optimism. The credibility of the Church’s message would necessarily depend on its capacity to reach far beyond the confines of the Catholic ghetto into the marketplace, into non-Christian and, indeed, non-religious spheres.3 It is important that the liturgical reforms be examined within such a framework. The extraordinary unanimity in the final vote on the Constitution on the Liturgy was the fruit of the fifty-year liturgical movement that had preceded the Council. The movement was successful because it did not grow in isolation but rather in tandem with church renewal promoted by the biblical, patristic, and ecumenical movements in that same historical period.
    [Show full text]
  • Hegel, Sade, and Gnostic Infinities
    Radical Orthodoxy: Theology, Philosophy, Politics, Vol. 1, Number 3 (September 2013): 383-425. ISSN 2050-392X HEGEL, SADE, AND GNOSTIC INFINITIES Cyril O’Regan lavoj Žižek not only made the impossible possible when he articulated an inner relation between Kant and de Sade, but showed that the impossible was necessary.1 The impossibility is necessary because of the temporal contiguity of thinkers who articulate two very different S versions of the Enlightenment, who variously support autonomy, and who feel called upon to take a stance with respect to Christian discourse and practice. As the demand for articulation is pressed within a horizon of questioning, proximally defined by the Lacanian problematic of self-presentation and horizonally by Adorno and Horkheimmer’s dialectic of the Enlightenment, Žižek would be the first to agree that his investigation is probative. One could press much more the issue of whether the logic of Kant’s view on radical evil is in fact that of the demonic, while much more could be said about the Enlightenment’s inversion in the ‘mad’ discourse of Sade and the relation- difference between both discourses and the Christian discourses that are objects of critique. However important it would be to complete this task, it seems even more necessary to engage the question of the relation between Hegel and Sade. More necessary, since not only is such a relation left unexplored while hinted at 1 See Žižek’s essay ‘On Radical Evil and Other Matters,’ in Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel, and the Critique of Ideology (Durham: Duke University Press, 1993), pp.
    [Show full text]
  • A Comparative Study of the Hermeneutics of Henri De Lubac and Hans-Georg Gadamer Concerning Tradition, Community and Faith in Th
    THE CATHOLIC UNIVERSITY OF AMERICA A Comparative Study of the Hermeneutics of Henri de Lubac and Hans-Georg Gadamer Concerning Tradition, Community and Faith in the Interpretation of Scripture A DISSERTATION Submitted to the Faculty of the School of Theology and Religious Studies Of The Catholic University of America In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements For the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy © Copyright All Rights Reserved By Eric Joseph Jenislawski Washington, DC 2016 A Comparative Study of the Hermeneutics of Henri de Lubac and Hans-Georg Gadamer Concerning Tradition, Community and Faith in the Interpretation of Scripture Eric Joseph Jenislawski Director: John T. Ford, CSC, S.T.D. ABSTRACT This dissertation investigates and compares the hermeneutics of the French Jesuit theologian, Henri de Lubac (1896-1991), and the German philosopher, Hans-Georg Gadamer (1900-2001). The writings of both Gadamer and de Lubac continue to generate scholarly investigation, including proposals to apply their insights to contemporary biblical interpretation. Although de Lubac and Gadamer were contemporaries, they never directly engaged each other’s writings; this dissertation brings their thought into dialogue. Chapter One provides a biographical overview of the lives of both scholars by situating the texts that will be examined within the broader context of each work. Since de Lubac approached the subject of biblical interpretation chiefly as an historian of exegesis, the first step in this comparative investigation is a formulation of de Lubac’s hermeneutical principles. Chapter Two, which constitutes the major portion of this dissertation, analyzes de Lubac’s works Catholicisme, Histoire et Esprit, Exégèse médiévale, and La Postérité spirituelle de Joachim de Flore in view of understanding his hermeneutics.
    [Show full text]
  • Hope in Action
    Introduction "Always be ready . ." “Always be ready to make your defense to anyone who demands from you an accounting for the hope that is in you” (1 Pet. 3:15). Within this biblical charge, addressed to early Christian communities suffering religious persecution at the turn of the second century, we find a concentrated expression of a task that has persistently pressed itself upon Christian theology. What is that hope which would sustain Christian communities down through the centuries? How might theologians offer an account of that hope responsive to the distinct demands of their time? Although the history of Christian theology might be read profitably as an effort to respond to these questions through the range of traditional theological topoi, beginning in the 1960s a number of prominent theologians in Europe would move these questions to the center of their theological projects as they attempted to renew the Christian tradition’s reading and appropriation of the doctrine of eschatology. Examined from a new historical vantage point, they identified in this doctrine a potent and compelling resource for offering a defense of the Christian’s hope under the conditions of the modern world. Two Catholic theologians who contributed to this turn to eschatology in the mid-1960s and for whom eschatology has been a 1 HOPE IN ACTION crucial concern ever since are Edward Schillebeeckx (1914–2009) and Johann Baptist Metz (b. 1928).1 In their early writings, each of these theologians worked to uncover the manner in which the Christian’s eschatological expectations for the future radically impinge on the present.
    [Show full text]
  • Christian Theology Edited by Ian A
    Cambridge University Press 978-1-107-41496-9 - The Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology Edited by Ian A. McFarland, David A. S. Fergusson, Karen Kilby, Iain R. Torrance Frontmatter More information the cambridge dictionary of Christian Theology With over 550 entries ranging from ‘Abba’ to ‘Zwingli’ composed by leading contemporary theologians from around the world, The Cambridge Dictionary of Christian Theology represents a fresh, ecumenical approach to theological refer- ence. Written with an emphasis on clarity and concision, all entries are designed to help the reader understand and assess the specifically theological significance of the most important concepts. Clearly structured, the volume is organized around a small number of ‘core entries’ which focus on key topics to provide a general overview of major subject areas, while making use of related shorter entries to impart a more detailed knowledge of technical terms. The work as a whole provides an introduction to the defining topics in Christian thought and is an essential reference point for students and scholars. ian a. mcfarland is Associate Professor of Systematic Theology at Emory University. His publications include Difference and Identity: A Theological Anthro- pology (2001) and The Divine Image: Envisioning the Invisible God (2005). davida.s.fergussonis Professor of Divinity and Principal of New College at the University of Edinburgh. His recent publications include Church, State and Civil Society (Cambridge, 2004) and Faith and Its Critics (2009). karen kilby is Head of the Department of Theology and Religious Studies at the University of Nottingham and President of the Catholic Theological Associ- ation of Great Britain. She is the author of A Brief Introduction to Karl Rahner (2007) and Karl Rahner: Theology and Philosophy (2004).
    [Show full text]
  • Karl Barth and Hans Urs Von Balthasar: a Critical Engagement
    CORE Metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk Provided by University of Birmingham Research Archive, E-theses Repository KARL BARTH AND HANS URS VON BALTHASAR: A CRITICAL ENGAGEMENT by STEPHEN DAVID WIGLEY A thesis submitted to the University of Birmingham for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY Department of Theology and Religion School of Historical Studies The University of Birmingham January 2006 University of Birmingham Research Archive e-theses repository This unpublished thesis/dissertation is copyright of the author and/or third parties. The intellectual property rights of the author or third parties in respect of this work are as defined by The Copyright Designs and Patents Act 1988 or as modified by any successor legislation. Any use made of information contained in this thesis/dissertation must be in accordance with that legislation and must be properly acknowledged. Further distribution or reproduction in any format is prohibited without the permission of the copyright holder. Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar: a critical engagement Abstract This thesis examines the relationship between two major twentieth century theologians, Karl Barth and Hans Urs von Balthasar. It seeks to show how their meeting, resulting in von Balthasar’s seminal study The Theology of Karl Barth, goes on to influence von Balthasar’s theological development throughout his trilogy beginning with The Glory of the Lord, continuing in the Theo-Drama and concluding with the Theo-Logic. In particular it explores the significance of the debate over the ‘analogy of being’ and seeks to show that von Balthasar’s decision to structure his trilogy around the transcendentals of ‘being’, the beautiful, the good and the true, results from his re-affirmation of the role of analogy in light of his debate with Barth.
    [Show full text]