The eighty years of Theological Studies bear witness to the birth of American Catholic theology. This article traces that development through five stages. During its first two decades scholasticism ...reigned and authority was watchful. Vatican II then introduced a period of change, followed by a thirty-five-year creative phase in which a modern consciousness discussed new issues. By the final period corresponding to Francis’s papacy, an American Catholic theology was in place.
Two developments that occurred over the course of the nineteenth century had a strong impact on Christian theology. The first was a deepening of the implications of historical consciousness, and the ...second was the impact of science on Christian self-understanding. Marx’s sociology of knowledge symbolizes the first; Darwin’s analysis of evolution symbolizes the second. These intellectual developments gave rise to various forms of process philosophy and theology. Within this context, a dialogue between Christian theology and evolution has yielded dramatically new convictions and practices in Christian spirituality, especially relative to ecology. For more than three decades Catherine Keller has been reflecting on the intellectual and practical effects that an internalization of the dynamic character of reality should have upon the practice of Christian life. Her text illustrates the basic framework of dynamic becoming that science demands, whether or not one is formally a process thinker. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was an earlier figure who was more zeroed in on the phenomenon of evolution, which he encountered in a distinct way as a Christian scientist trained in geology and paleontology, as distinct from biology or genetics. Evolution explicitly informs his spirituality. These two different Christian writers, the one representing the imaginative framework of being as process and becoming, the other focused on how evolution affects intentional spiritual life, open new perspectives on the spiritual character of people’s active lives of work and creativity in the world that science presents to us.
Evolution raises problems for some Christian beliefs, such as the character of God’s creating act, whether God intervenes in nature’s consistency, God’s purpose in the light of nature’s randomness, ...and whether we can refer to anything specific God does in history. This article addresses these issues first with some abstract conceptions of God, and then with considerations of the nature of God creating, the immanence and transcendence of God, and God’s “action” in the world. It concludes with reflections on the Christian life in the light of this theological construction.
precis: This essay makes the case for grace-filled naturalism by entering into dialogue with the theology of Edward Schillebeeckx. It first shows that God's creative action places God within all ...finite reality in an immediate way. It then shows how God as Spirit can be identified with God's primary or creating causality. Jesus' divinity can also be understood within the framework of a paradigmatic concentrated instance of God's creating presence. This construction yields a framework for a naturalist spirituality of union with God, constituted by God as Spirit, and mediated by Christ that is completely at home in today's secular, scientific world.
The ecumenical movement, proceeding comparing doctrines and ecclesial structures that divide, has foundered. The article suggests turning to what all churches share in common as a new starting point, ...namely, an ecclesial spirituality of following Jesus. The Spiritual Exercises of Ignatius Loyola can help bring this bond of unity to the surface. Negotiating on the basis of this common possession will allow the ideal of a pluralistic unity to take hold and encourage ecclesial structures that protect and honor rather than exclude different church traditions.
Liberation and Spirituality Haight, Roger
Buddhist-Christian studies,
01/2014, Letnik:
34, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
These reflections on liberation and spirituality respond to a precise question. People committed to action in behalf of liberation need a spirituality. The issue is not why Christian spirituality ...needs to be attentive to the demands of the poor and other victims of discrimination. A slightly different issue is at stake in the question of what spirituality, present in Christianity, is summoned forth when people who are dedicated to the project of liberation turn to Christianity and ask about its spiritual resources. Here, Haight explores the language of liberation and spirituality and brings forward four classic witnesses to Christian spirituality and allows each to highlight a particular element of an integral Christian spirituality.
This volume considers two authors who represent different but complementary responses to social injustice and human degradation. The writings of Walter Rauschenbusch and Dorothy Day respond to an ...American situation that arose out of the Industrial Revolution and reflect especially-but not exclusively-urban life on the East Coast of the United States during the late nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. Although these two authors differ greatly, they both reacted to the extreme social inequality and strife that occurred between 1890 and the beginning of World War II. They shared a total commitment to the cause of social justice, their Christian faith, and an active engagement in the quest for a just social order. But the different ways they reacted to the situation generated different spiritualities. Rauschenbusch was a pastor, writer, historian, and seminary professor. Day was a journalist who became an organizer. The strategic differences between them, however, grew out of a common sustained reaction against the massive deprivation that surrounded them. There is no spiritual rivalry here. They complement each other and reinforce the Christian humanitarian motivation that drives them. Their work brings the social dimension of Christian spirituality to the surface in a way that had not been emphasized in the same focused way before them. They are part of an awakening to the degree to which the social order lies in the hands of the people who support it. Both Rauschenbusch and Day are examples of an explicit recognition of the social dimension of Christian spirituality and a radical acting-out of that response in two distinctly different ways.
Two developments that occurred over the course of the nineteenth century had a strong impact on Christian theology. The first was a deepening of the implications of historical consciousness, and the ...second was the impact of science on Christian self-understanding. Marx's sociology of knowledge symbolizes the first; Darwin's analysis of evolution symbolizes the second. These intellectual developments gave rise to various forms of process philosophy and theology. Within this context, a dialogue between Christian theology and evolution has yielded dramatically new convictions and practices in Christian spirituality, especially relative to ecology. For more than three decades Catherine Keller has been reflecting on the intellectual and practical effects that an internalization of the dynamic character of reality should have upon the practice of Christian life. Her text illustrates the basic framework of dynamic becoming that science demands, whether or not one is formally a process thinker. Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was an earlier figure who was more zeroed in on the phenomenon of evolution, which he encountered in a distinct way as a Christian scientist trained in geology and paleontology, as distinct from biology or genetics. Evolution explicitly informs his spirituality. These two different Christian writers, the one representing the imaginative framework of being as process and becoming, the other focused on how evolution affects intentional spiritual life, open new perspectives on the spiritual character of people's active lives of work and creativity in the world that science presents to us.
If Thomas Aquinas was born in 1225 as it is commonly thought, then he died before reaching the age of fifty after producing the single-most influential systematic theology of the Western Christian ...tradition. He did this with a formula: he internalized the thought of Aristotle as it was being introduced into Western Europe and translated into Latin, and he in turn translated Christianity into this Aristotelian language. One can use the principles of hermeneutics outlined in Retrieving the Spiritual Teaching of Jesus of this series to analyze what was going on as Aquinas went through some of the basic doctrines of the church in his Summa Theologiae. He laid out their contents by answering an exhaustive series of questions and responding to each of them in intricate detail. The model for each question and answer was drawn directly from the pattern of learning at the University of Paris. Although systematic and abstract, it also enabled an extensive conversation with the tradition of classical theologians and his own contemporaries. This may seem quite distant from spiritual life on the ground, but the method produced a clear understanding of the structure of spiritual life in terms of its goal and the means of attaining it. Aquinas's analysis of grace, how it enabled genuine Christian spirituality, empowered the virtues, and led to eternal life, constitutes a classic substructure of Western Christian spirituality that became all the more distinctive when Reformation spiritualities offered alternatives to it.
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