Accepted Senior Papers and Abstracts
Accepted Senior Papers and Abstracts
Michael Quisinsky (Independent Scholar, Dr. theol.)
Tradition and the Normativity of History within an « Economy of Salvation »
« We believe in one God, … Maker of Heaven and Earth … ; we look for … the life of the world to come ». With these words of the Creed, Christians claim that history has its origin and its aim in God who reveals himself within this very history, a self-revelation culminating in the life, death and resurrection of « Jesus Christ, … begotten of the Father before all worlds… whose kingdom shall have no end ». Also, Christians claim that the Holy Ghost is present throughout history as « Giver of life ».
Yet contemporary living and thinking know about the limits of our conceiving of « history » – human history as well as « cosmic » history, both implicated in the Creed. As to « Tradition » as a christian way to deal with history and its normativity, we are aware that in a pluralistic world, christian « Tradition » is only one (hi)story told among others. Furthermore, within our Churches, we realize that the « living Tradition » is all but a monolithic (hi)story, but challenges our togetherness as well as our testimonies by a dynamic plurality of multifold « (hi)stories » and their implications.
The question arises which could be the chances and limits of the concept of « economy of Salvation » to express the multifold aspects and levels of Tradition and traditions, history and historicity within a christian view of reality. Among the main challenges to discuss with the help of this concept, there will be, on the one hand, the relationship between Revelation, Salvation History and History (nowadays, this also leads to the question of the place of christianism in the history of world religions); and, on the other hand, the relationship between God’s salvific will and the freedom of its Creation, especially the freedom of the humans created in the image of God.
Jerry T. Farmer (Professor of Systematic and Moral Theology, Xavier University of Louisiana, New Orleans, LA, USA)
Karl Rahner: Rupture, Discontinuity . . . Incomprehensible Mystery
“Karl Rahner: Rupture, Discontinuity . . . Incomprehensible Mystery,” is rooted in my own local experience. My wife, Angeles, struggled for six years after being diagnosed with breast cancer, and died in 2009. Of course, the death of a spouse is not an uncommon experience, but it is my experience, and it is from the context of this experience that my own theological reflection takes place. My faith affirmation is centered in my belief and experience that the mutual love that my wife and I have shared together for many years continues to be supported and nourished by God’s own love. My theological reflection draws insight and perspective from the theology of Karl Rahner. Rahner, in his 1954 “Reflections on the Experience of Grace,” stressed the distinction between our experience of the spirit on the one hand and the speaking and philosophizing about the transcendence of the spirit on the other hand, which is a derived and secondary experience. But perhaps the most challenging experience for me focuses not simply on the end of life for my wife, but how our relationship itself is included in that “rupture, discontinuty. . . incomprehensible mystery.” What one has now accepted as definitive, the partner must now make that same surrender. But it is precisely, now, out of, or from the context of that ruptured relationship that the other is called anew to focus on one’s own freedom, one’s own freedom-decisions.
Natalie Kertes Weaver (Department of Religious Studies, Director of Humanities, Ursuline College, Pepper Pike, OH, USA)
The Normative History of Traditional Sex: Intersex and Diversity as the New Norm
This paper will ask how the biblical and theological traditions throughout Western history have produced as normative a sexually dimorphic theological anthropology. The paper will argue that the biblical and theological sources purport to speak as revelation about both the genesis and telos of human bodily sexedness, understood as a male-female complementarity. These sources, however, are inattentive to the actual sexed body, with its range of anatomically varied presentations. As such, the scripturally based, theological tradition produces and reinforces a normative interpretation of physical sex whereby sexual anatomical variety is simply erased. The normative sexed body in turn takes on social and moral meaning that is detached from actual variegated bodiliness. Within this theological tradition, then, bodies become not what they are in their physical given-ness but rather what they are socially and morally conformed to be. The nearly ubiquitous urge to surgically “norm” intersex bodies (that is, bodies that do not neatly fall into categories of male or female sex) demonstrates this point. In this very concrete way, the theological tradition collaborates in the production of what it has selectively identified as normative.
The paper will conclude that reclaiming variety in the sexed body is critical for a responsible theological anthropology. The inarguable existence of intersex bodies reveals the inadequacy of the historical “norming” of sex. Moreover, Christian moral thinking about physical sex requires a thorough revisioning once male-female sexual dimorphism is recognized as an inadequate description of bodily presentations of sex. Intersex is thus a lens through which to revise a range of theological claims about human embodiment and suggests biological diversity as the new “norm” for revisiting the tradition.
Ivana Noble (Dolejšová) (Associate Professor of Ecumenical Theology, Charles University and Senior Research Fellow, International Baptist Seminary, Prague, Czech Republic)
History Tied Down by the Normativity of Tradition? (Inversion of Perspective in the Orthodox Theology, its Challenges and its Problems)
In this paper an inverse connection between history and tradition will be examined, one in which normativity is ascribed to the latter. I will concentrate on both the potential and the difficulties inherent in understanding the “living tradition” as a “permanent reference point”, be it Byzantine theology (Lossky, Meyendorff) or the Greek Fathers of the early centuries (Florovsky, Schmemann). What role does history over against such a permanent reference point? With the help of Mother Maria Skobtsova and Andrew Louth, the paper will examine where and how those Orthodox theologians who defended the normativity of tradition were in danger of what may be termed making history a spiritual or ecclesial possession of tradition. Furthermore, it will ask how Mother Maria and Andrew Louth themselves dealt with such a danger by making space for a rooted but non-possessive theological response to genuinely new historical situations.
Tim Noble (Course Leader in Contextual Missiology, IBTS, Prague, Czech Republic)
“Your history shall be my history”: The Indigenization of Russian Orthodox Tradition in Alaska
The Russian Orthodox mission to Alaska began in 1794 and led to the establishment of an Orthodox Church among indigenous Alaskans that remains to this day. Drawing on anthropological research and documents from Orthodox missionaries such as Bishop (St.) Innocent Veniaminov, this paper will examine the encounter between the world of nineteenth-century Russian Orthodoxy and the traditional beliefs and practices of native peoples. How did these two histories merge into one, so that what might have been regarded as a colonial imposition came to be viewed as an integral part of Aleut and Tlingit life and culture? The paper will look at the dual tradition of eastern and western Christianity which influenced Bishop Innocent and his theological outlook, and the possibilities this opened up, allowing an expansion in the horizons of both histories, without demanding that either be entirely abandoned. The paper will also show how this indigenized tradition helped native Alaskans to withstand the arrival of both missionaries and civil officials with very different views about history and life following the sale of Alaska to the USA in 1867. The incorporation of Orthodoxy into native Alaskan life established a position from which these other claims about history and tradition could be assessed and judged, and, frequently, be found wanting.
Todd Salzman (Professor of Christian Ethics, Creighton University, Omaha, NE, USA)
Michael G. Lawler (Professor Emeritus of Catholic Theology, Creighton University, Omaha, NE, USA)
The Normativity of History that Shapes Tradition: Human Experience, the Social Sciences and the Sensus Fidei
This paper argues that a central dimension for discerning the interrelationship between tradition and the normativity of history is the role of the social sciences in theological method. This essay focuses specifically on the correlations between theology, history, and experience. It examines the ecclesial experience embedded in the concepts of sensus fidei, reception, and non-reception; the experience analyzed by liberationist and feminist theologians; and the experimental experience of the sciences. Since all believers, laity, theologians, and bishops alike, and their theologies are inevitably influenced by the societies in which they live, the essay also inquires into the science of sociology and the light it can shine on the actual experience and, therefore, the actual theologies of all those believers. It concludes, with the Second Vatican Council, that by making use of the sciences, and experience in general, all the faithful “will be brought to a purer and more mature living of the faith.”
Radu Bordeianu (Assistant Professor, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA)
Faith Incarnate in Culture: An Orthodox Perspective
Some theologians use their philosophical presuppositions as criteria for truth, over Tradition. Others reject contemporary culture and find safety in what they consider ancient formulae eternally representing Tradition. Ideally, Revelation should be constantly reformulated in the culture of each time and place, since Christianity is a religion of the Incarnation: God became a human being in a certain culture, in a specific religious milieu. Throughout the ages, Christians embodied Christ’s gospel in their specific contexts. Their theology was inspired: the Spirit rests upon the Church as it rested on Christ, guiding the Church in truth – the same truth always incarnate in a specific historical context.
Consequently, Christianity will be embodied differently in Western Europe, Eastern Europe, or India. In this global perspective, culture influences the worship and teachings of the Church. Conversely, the Church influences cultures: some societies are predominantly Christian, Hindu, Muslim, etc., even to the point where the state legislates religious moral norms.
Orthodox theologians adopt different attitudes towards history and culture. Afanassieff and Schmemann are skeptical about historical developments: influence of the empire on Church structures, Byzantine customs on liturgical traditions, Western concepts on sacramental theology. Florovsky, however, writes about the sanctification and “Churchification” of Hellenism, which gave the latter an eternal value, while also calling for a neo-patristic synthesis that takes into account contemporary culture. Zizioulas proposes patristic theology as a criterion for truth, while also emphasizing the Fathers’ interaction with the philosophy of their time and referring to Levinas as the contemporary philosopher who is closest to patristic thought. Staniloae considers that tradition is not closed: the Holy Spirit leads the Church in truth, appropriating Tradition in today’s context. This interaction between history and tradition insures continuity with the past down to the Apostolic Church, relevance in the present, and eschatological orientation. Left simply repetitive, theology is useless and even damaging. To stay true to the spirit of the past, one might even have to abandon the forms of the past.
Phyllis H. Kaminski (Professor, Department of Religious Studies, Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, IN, USA)
Desire and Contemplative Silence: A Feminist Exploration of Transformation Within and Beyond Tradition
Luce Irigaray has labored to think through eros and the transformation of human subjectivity in the hope of building a world that recognizes difference(s) and fosters human being and becoming. This paper experiments with the dynamics of the recurring silence within that becoming, drawing on the texts of Luce Irigaray and those of feminist contemplative Constance FitzGerald. Focusing on the cultivation of fruitful silence by women, I propose three interrelated dynamics: first, the “unsaying” of imposed subjectivity (cultural, historical constructions of the self); second, detachment from and letting go of the internalized story of one’s identity; and third, an active silence at the threshold in which a free bodied subject discerns the risks involved in choosing to remain still or daring to speak. By elaborating the dialectical elements of inner stillness and the transformation of desire, I hope to further critical understanding of role of history, culture, and the practice of silence as indispensable to the transformation of individuals and their communities.
Jaroslav Z. Skira (Director, Eastern Christian Studies Program and Associate Professor of Historical Theology, Regis College, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada)
Forging Tradition in New Worlds: The Council Diaries of Met. Maxim Hermaniuk
This presentation will centre around themes found in the unpublished Second Vatican Council diaries of the late Maxim Hermaniuk, Metropolitan of Winnipeg, of the Ukrainian (Eastern) Catholics in Canada. He was also an alumnus of the KUL, and taught for a number of years as part of the Redemptorist order in Belgium. He was the most active of all the Ukrainian Catholic bishops at the council, and made numerous valuable contributions to the council. In my presentation I will first briefly touch upon Hermaniuk’s public and behind-the-scenes work and thoughts on the establishment of an Apostolic College by the council, as well as his call to nullify the anathemas of 1054 between the East and West. These two areas exhibit Hermaniuk’s historiographical methodology, and indicate his acute awareness that every “history has a history.” Paricular to the Ukrainian Catholic Church, which was severely persecuted in the former Soviet Union at the time, we see his thoughts on affirming the historical particularity and dignity of his Church over and against the Vatican’s Ostpolitik with Moscow, as well as this church’s role in the wider Catholic communion. These diaries reveal how the Ukrainian Catholic bishops at the Council tried to forge, not without tension and disagreement, a new manifestation of the Tradition (in liturgy, catechesis, ecumenism, education, mission, ecclesial polity) for their church in continuity with the historical past, but also requiring adaptation to the demands of their émigré communities in the many new worlds in which they have found themselves.
Peter McGrail (Associate Professor of Theology, Liverpool Hope University, Liverpool, England)
The Appeal to History and the Creation of Liturgical Tradition: The Case of Liverpool Cathedral
Liturgical celebration is a neuralgic point at in which the tension between history and tradition can be keenly experienced – particularly when that tradition is in the process of conscious generation. This paper examines the relationship between the appeal to history, the relationship with contemporary culture and the development of a unique ritual style at the cathedral of Liverpool Anglican Diocese.
Built between 1904 and 1978, Liverpool cathedral embodies the stresses of its age. Gothic in style but industrial in scale, it articulates the tension between an architectural appeal to history and the rapid shifts in society and the fortunes of both its home city and Church during the period of its construction.
Zn early challenge was to develop a liturgical style that filled the cathedral’s vast spaces and responded to growing civic and public needs, whist reflecting the evangelical tenor of the diocese. Consequently, during the 1930s and 40s it witnessed considerable liturgical innovation. During the same years, the cathedral progressively acquired a historical liturgical library of medieval manuscripts, early printed service books and contemporary studies that was intended to inform the liturgical project.
This paper uses archival material to trace the relationship between the genesis of a proper Liverpool cathedral liturgy and the Library’s acquisition. Ultimately it argues that for ideological reasons and wartime exigencies the potential interplay between a fully-articulated appeal to history and new ritual forms was never securely achieved.
Anthony J. Godzieba (Professor of Theology and Religious Studies, Villanova University, Villanova, PA, USA)
Ut Musica Christianitas: Christian Tradition as a History of Performances
Some fifteen years ago I argued that the New Testament is best understood as analogous to a musical score rather than a text and that the Christian tradition is best understood as a history of performance (“Method and Interpretation: The New Testament’s Heretical Hermeneutic [Prelude and Fugue]”, Heythrop Journal 36/3 [1995]). In other words, the salvific truth of the Gospel, like the “truth” of the musical work, is most adequately realized in practices that link the past with a specific context in the present. The performance of discipleship, like that of music, is realized over time and in history. My argument against the hegemony of the “linguistic turn” attempted to expand the Gadamer’s Wirkungsgeschichte and Jauss’ notion of reception hermeneutics into an historically-informed “performance hermeneutic” and to account for what is “unscripted” in the constitution of the truth disclosed in the Christian tradition.
In the light of subsequent analyses of this type of performance hermeneutic with regard to music (John Butt, Playing with History [2002]) and philosophy (Bruce Ellis Benson, The Improvisation of Musical Dialogue [2003]), this paper revisits my earlier proposal, fleshes it out with more detail as to its operations, and addresses directly the conference’s issue of “tradition and normativity”. The question of the normativity of the historical life of Jesus will be used as a test case. This paper is part of a larger project that develops a theological aesthetics along hermeneutical lines.
J. Murray Murdoch, Jr. (Center for Liberal Education, Villanova University, Villanova, PA, USA)
History, Transcendence, and Hegel’s Absolute Spirit
Hegel writes, in the shorter version of his Logic, that “The history of philosophy is the story of the discovery of the thoughts about the absolute, which is their subject matter.” Michael Theunissen has suggested that while Hegel is a vibrant part of the philosophical and even the political and cultural climate of the day, the suggestion that we can discuss thoughts about the Absolute is the object of scorn, even of laughter (Theunissen, 1970). But the meaning of Hegel’s term, Absolute Spirit, differs broadly: from one end of the spectrum, Absolute Spirit might be identical with God while from another it might be “a given community’s reflection on its essential self-identity and its highest interests through the historical practices and institutions of art, religion, and philosophy” (Pinkard, 1996).
Hegel understands history as a teleological process which gradually unfolds an ultimate conception of the absolute. So if the absolute itself doesn’t change, our conception of it does change and, for Hegel, progresses. But there is a tension in Hegel’s suggestion that historicized description of the absolute. A traditional, Christian conception of God, say that of St. Augustine, would remove God as the transcendent being from the movements of history. For Augustine, God enables and sustains history, but God is not a part of it. In this paper I investigate the tension between the transcendent conception of God and an immanent conception of the absolute working itself out through history through an investigation of Hegel’s discussion of the absolute.
Jessica M. Murdoch (Assistant Professor of Theology and Religious Studies, Villanova University, Villanova, PA, USA)
Is Tradition Inspired?
The question of the relationship between traditional dogmatic formulations on the one hand and the historical process of their formation comes to the fore amidst 19th century historicist concerns. Some early responses to this tension between tradition and history include the unitive explanatory approach of Newman and the more decontructive approach of Bultmann’s demythologization. These concerns are only taken up in a substantive way in Dei Verbum: the Dogmatic Constitution on Divine Revelation, issued by Vatican II. Dei Verbum defines revelation primarily as the person of Christ Himself, who is “the mediator and sum total of revelation.” Thus, all written revelation is the secondary reflection upon this original departure in the Word of God. Nevertheless, the document distinguishes inspired Scripture, which is the norma normans non normata of the Christian faith, from tradition which is simply another “source” of revelation.
The conception of revelation given in Dei Verbum is corroborated in the thought of Karl Rahner, which is not at all surprising considering Rahner’s influence upon the Council. Rahner, however, deepens our understanding of tradition by defining it as the historical process of God’s revelation as apprehended by faith. The source and subject of tradition is, therefore, the Holy Spirit. In this paper, I will argue that Rahner’s conception of tradition provides an opening for understanding the process of the formation of tradition as a kind of inspiration.
Timothy J. Crutcher (Professor of Church History and Theology, Southern Nazarene University, Bethany, OK, USA)
Evolution and Entropy: History and the Normativity of Tradition
It is in some ways the archetypal, classic argument between the Roman Catholic and Protestant traditions. Just how much authority does tradition have or ought it to have? Protestants tend to think that only a small section of tradition—that represented by the scriptural canon—reaches an authoritative form, and that early on, leaving most Roman Catholics to wonder why they think that process just magically stopped somehow. Roman Catholics tend to think that the work of the Holy Spirit in the life of the Church is continually allowing traditions to settle in to an authoritative form, leaving most Protestants to wonder how you can tell the difference between those traditions that should not be questioned and those that should. However, in spite of their rhetoric, both sides exhibit practices that seem to resonate with the beliefs of the other side. Protestants have their inviolable traditions with origins much later than the Scripture. Roman Catholics will still change things that previous generations would have considered canonical tradition. This raises the possibility that there might be enough common ground between the two camps that one could articulate a meeting place between the two to which both sides would be amenable.
What I will propose is a common hermeneutic of tradition, a way to tell when a tradition should be treated as normative by the community of faith as it travels through history, a hermeneutic to which I believe both Protestants and Roman Catholics could, at least in theory, agree. In fact, I will claim that this is actually what each side does in practice, regardless of whatever rhetoric they may feel compelled to uphold. This hermeneutic is based on the way traditions shape history and involves identifying what I will call “entropic traditions,” traditions that diminish possibilities for Christian life and action as they are handed down, and “evolutionary traditions,” traditions that increase possibilities for Christian life and action. My paper will lay out the criteria for distinguishing between the two and offer some concrete proposals on how such a hermeneutic of tradition could help when it comes to some particularly thorny theological debates between the two camps.
Delfo Canceran (Instructor in Theology, University of Santo Tomas, Manila, Philippines)
History from a Poststructuralist Perspective
Poststructuralists criticize the assumption that discourse is a transparent expression of a truth which reflects reality. In response, they develop the theory that discourse is characterized by gaps, discontinuities and suspensions of meanings in which difference, undecidability, plurality and uncertainty are at play. Historically, two dominant theories of history have been used in crafting the world. First, we have the Christian myth whereby God occupies the center stage of the cosmos. In this myth, the entire cosmos becomes infused with a transcendent meaning. Second, we have the Hegelian myth whereby the immanent rationality underlies the appearance of chaos and conflict in the world. In this concoction, the truth of realty is linked with the process of articulation where the Spirit comes to a self-realization. Poststructuralist conception of history destabilizes these teleological theories of history and focuses on the contingency and ambiguity of history. Thus, poststructuralists pose the critical questions as to who reads the past, whose interpretation becomes normative, what is selected and what is foreclosed. They realize that interpretative models of history are always informed by contextually embedded and situationally based assumptions. Thus, any theory of history is always a product of interpretative assumptions, shaped by one’s location in history. Thus historians should take into account the often contradictory sources and effects of multiple interests and plural perspectives when reading the past. This assumes a recognition of multiple social locations in history. This suggests that there can be no single theoretical discourse that is going to offer an overall explanation for all events in history. In this respect, historical interpretations are fictional inventions, because they are always steeped in ideology, intended to serve particular interests. Thus, to choose one interpretation of the past events over other is really a matter of ideological preference.
Marie L. Baird (Assistant Professor of Theology, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA)
Tradition and the Savagery of History
What does the claim that there is a normativity to history mean, in light of historical atrocity, given the undeniable fact of twentieth century genocide? What does the normativity of history have to say to the phenomenality of the twentieth century’s version of homo sacer that Giorgio Agamben’s analyses of the muselmann have been able to apply to this previous century’s worst-case scenario of life in extremity? What role does a new understanding, however initially unintended, of kenosis have to contribute to a challenge to the very idea of “normativity” that might be discernable in both history and tradition?
This essay will argue that Agamben’s analyses of the homo sacer/muselmann will build upon Foucault’s examination of the effects of biopower, in conjunction with Gianni Vattimo’s more recent discussion of kenosis given the secularization of western culture brought about by Christianity, in order to call into question the very idea of normativity in history. If such a case can be made, we are then in a position to ask how the very notion of “tradition” can accommodate a sense of normativity that seems to be belied by the, again undeniable, fact of twentieth century life in extremity. Can a tradition that remains faithful to its theological antecedents acquire a “weak” sense similar to the “weakness” Vattimo has called for in relation to ontology? Can a newly “weak” tradition speak meaningfully to the utterly disenfranchised subject of history who has been heretofore excluded from its boundaries? This essay will offer the lineaments of an outline as to what contours such a “weak” tradition might take.
Susan Rakoczy (Professor, St Joseph’s Theological Institute, Cedara, South Africa)
Feminist Contributions to the Tradition of Discernment
The Christian tradition of discernment has been shaped primarily by the experience of men. While their contributions are significant, especially that of St. Ignatius of Loyola, the tradition must be enriched and broadened by the experiences of women. This paper will use the methodology of feminist theology to argue that the focus on male interpretations of discernment has ignored and/or diminished the importance of women’s experiences. It will examine the insights of the medieval mystic Catherine of Siena (1347-1380) and the 19th century reformer Florence Nightingale (1820-1910) whose lives demonstrate that a feminist interpretation of discernment is rooted in praxis, not theory.
Philip J. Rossi, SJ (Professor of Theology, Marquette University, Milwaukee, WI, USA)
Human Contingency, Divine Freedom, and the Normative Shape of Saving History
This paper will argue that human vulnerability—inscribed in the contingency of Creation, taken into the triune relationality of God in the Incarnation, and transformed to salvific efficacy in the outpouring of the Spirit—provides a central locus for a contemporary critical theological engagement with normative claims that arise from and within history. The first part of the paper will thus articulate an account of human vulnerability that will be indexed both historically and theologically: It will be indexed historically to the trajectory of the emergence of late modernity’s dynamics of socio-cultural fragmentation, and indexed theologically to the triune manner of God’s incarnate entrance into the dynamics of the created contingencies of nature and culture. This section will also highlight how those dynamics of fragmentation provide a basis for significant reflective enrichment of theological efforts to construe history as the interplay of divine and human freedom that comes to fullness in the Incarnation. The second part will then examine how such divine entrance into the full range of created contingency, as it is brought to focus in the confession that the crucified Jesus is risen, thereby constitutes human vulnerability as a normative marker for the operation and efficacy of grace in history.
Marinus C. Iwuchukwu (Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology, Duquesne University, Pittsburgh, PA, USA)
A Critique of the Historical Development of Catholic Dialogue With Jews and Muslims and the Challenges and Benefits of Post-Modern Religious Pluralism.
A major papal document of Paul VI, Ecclesiam Suam of 1964, set in motion an unprecedented development in the relationship of Catholics with other religions of the world, especially Judaism and Islam. That historical encyclical was matched doctrinally and theologically by Vatican II documents Ad Gentes, Gaudium et Spes, and Nostra Aetate. All three documents reflect non-Christian religions in favorable and positive lights. Nostra Aetate, in particular recommended and advocated active and meaningful dialogue with other world religions with special references to Islam and Judaism. Post-Vatican II papal and other ecclesial documents followed in the lead of Nostra Aetate and Ecclesiam Suam not only by advocating interfaith dialogues but also delineating and recommending appropriate modalities and assumptions for enduring interfaith dialogues. At the heels of this theological and doctrinal developments are theological insights and theological evolution that led to religious pluralism. While many scholars are divided on a definitive meaning and understanding of post modern religious pluralism, most of them, in unison reject exclusivism as applicable religious paradigm for explaining the relationship of one religion to the other. This paper will constructively and critically evaluate the historical development of the theology of interfaith dialogue and the evolution of postmodern theology of religious pluralism. It will examine the benefits and challenges of postmodern religious pluralism on the theological sub-discipline of interreligious dialogue.
Scott Holland (Professor of Theology & Culture at Bethany Theological Seminary, Richmond, IN, USA)
History & Tradition as Imaginary Homelands or Why It Is Narrative All the Way Down
The old American detective television series Dragnet reflected a populist historicism and empiricism. When the detectives arrived at the scene of a crime witnesses would begin to narrate their accounts of what happened with great story-shaped flair. Detective Joe Friday would immediately interrupt the narration with the demand, “Just the facts, please, just the facts.” However, witnesses to a crime scene, an historical event or a traditional act of theological composition cannot escape the conditions of narrativity in the quest for facts. Drawing from Hayden White’s Metahistory and Paul Ricoeur’s Time and Narrative, which he wrote in response to White’s challenging work on historical and ideological storytelling, this paper explores the “figural” nature of all writing, whether in the genres of fiction, history, tradition or theology. Because of the figural nature of all language, traditions are indeed imaginary homelands inviting inventive construction, deconstruction and reconstruction. Two case studies in this presentation will illustrate this inventive phenomenon: the uses of Vatican II in liberal Catholic thought and the current rediscovery and re-appropriation of Radical Anabaptism in postmodern Protestant theology. We will consider how theology as imaginative construction uses history and tradition in the long, open and never finished adventure of storytelling. As Elie Wiesel and the rabbis instruct, “We tell a story to find another story.”
Mark D. Chapman (Reader in Modern Theology, Oxford University, Oxford, England)
“Temporal and Spatial Catholicism”: Tensions in Historicism in the Oxford Movement
This paper discusses the understanding of catholicity which emerged during the period of the Oxford Movement (1833-1845). Under the leadership of Newman, Keble and later Pusey, a phenomenon emerged in Anglicanism which I have called ‘temporal catholicism’. The writers of the Tracts for the Times established the identity of the contemporary church in terms of its continuity with the church of the past. Temporal catholicism implies a distinct understanding of tradition based on a historicist understanding of doctrine as finalised in the period of the early church (usually to 451AD). Most often, the Fathers were read in a decontextualized way: many authors were guilty of ‘patristic fundamentalism’ (Nockles). This understanding of ‘temporal catholicity’ is open to the challenge that it is unable to accommodate any theory of development, or to provide a mechanism for authoritative decisions to be made in the present. I outline the problem of historicist readings of the Fathers (and Tradition) making particular reference to Newman’s earlier Anglican writings, especially as he came to distance himself from Pusey and other Tractarians: I analyse his loss of faith in history, and the emergence of his understanding of doctrine (and Tradition) as developing through time and as guaranteed by an authoritative teaching body in the present. Key to Newman’s change of view – and his conversion to Roman Catholicism – was what he saw as the need for a visible source of authority in the present as a solution to the problem of the unity of the church across space (‘spatial catholicity’).
Michael Purcell (Senior Lecturer in Systematic Theology, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh, Scotland)
The immemoriality of the past: some Eucharistic reflections on Marion and Derrida
Marion writes of the Eucharistic Site of Theology (God Without Being) and notes the resistance of the Eucharist to appropriation by any individual person or individual community. The intent is to preserve the exteriority of the Eucharistic event. For Marion, transubstantiation is an apt notion for achieving this, already indicated in Aquinas’ aptissime. The Eucharist would therefore transcend history and culture. Time and its three temporal ecstases are implicated here, for as Aquinas hymns in O Sacrum Convivium in quo Christus sumitur. Recolitur memoria passionis eius, mens impletur gratia, et futurae gloriae nobis pignus datur. (O sacred banquet in which Christ is received. The memory of his passion is recalled, our lives are filled with grace, and a pledge of future glory is given to us).
The Eucharist is past, present, and future. As presence, it looks to a future yet to be fulfilled, and intends what cannot be intended for the future, as the eschatological is yet-to-come, but may not come. It looks to a past which cannot be retrieved, for the very event of memoriality is immemorial. Hence the constant need of repetition in an attempt to represent a single sacrificial offering, to catch glimpses of aspects yet to be discovered.
Yet, the irretrievability of the past coincides with the excess of the gift given, though with differing trajectories.
As incarnate, the Eucharist however is historically and culturally conditioned, although Marion would want to argue its trans-historical and trans-cultural transcendence.
As historically and culturally situated, Derrida opens up a field of interpretation. In re-thinking Husserl’s notion of sign, and arguing that signs are fundamentally indicative (Anzeigen) rather than expressive (Ausdrucken), Derrida introduces a web of meaning. Such a web needs also to be faithful to the past..
It may that the present, although a point of departure, relies on the past, and looks to a future which, like the Messiah at the gates of Rome, may or may not come.
Patrick C. Chibuko (Senior Lecturer, Catholic Institute of West Africa, Port Harcourt, Nigeria)
Tradition and Normativity of History: An Afro Liturgical Perspective
The development of the liturgy today owes a great deal to the Franco-Germanic leadership ranging from Gregory the Great to Gregory V11 (590-1073). The liturgy had in its new Latin form been gradually developed and expanded by the labours of the popes in writing euchologies, in particular by Leo the Great and Gelasius 1. Under Gregory the Great and his immediate successors, it received its final form which found its concrete embodiment in the so-called Gregorian Sacramentary, the so-called Gregorian antiphonary, the Capitulare evangeliorum, and the Ordines.
The Gregorian Sacramentary contains the prayers to be recited by the celebrant at Mass throughout the liturgical year, and those to be said at the administration of the sacraments. The Antiphonary provided the Schola of singers with its part in the worship of the Eucharist. The Capitulare evangeliorum showed the deacon which section of the four gospels he had to read on each liturgical day. And finally, the Ordines give directions to the clergy concerning the ritual procedure to be observed at each liturgical function.
In this final form, which was finally established by Gregory and his immediate successors and was thereafter known as Gregorian, the Roman liturgy made its home first in England and then under Peppin and Charlemagne in the Franco-Germanic world. After some socio-cultural ordeals, it became domiciled at Rome AD 1000 or shortly afterwards.
Observations:
i. A liturgical tradition that shaped liturgical history down through the centuries till date.
ii. A model of classical liturgy known for the availability of proper liturgical books in the hands of proper liturgical ministers bringing about the tremendous effect of optimal active participation of the worshipping community.
iii. A paradigm of well articulated liturgy distinguished by noble simplicity, noble brevity, noble sobriety and noble practicality or functionality.
iv. An eloquent evidence of a liturgy that influenced a great deal the entire liturgical reforms of the Second Vatican Council especially SC 7; 37- 40; 66ff.
v. A prototype and a wholesome precedence for subsequent liturgical inculturation projects especially the African Church in evolving a new liturgy that qualifies as truly christian and fully cultural.
vi. liturgy transcended liturgical ambient to serve the socio-political unification of the Franco-Germanic world direly needed in the empire.
Cyril Orji (Assistant Professor of Systematic Theology, University of Dayton, OH, USA)
Tradition and Normativity of History in the Intellectual Appeal of Catholicism: Newman and Lonergan in Conversation
Concrete evidence that the theological influence of John Henry Cardinal Newman (who sought the nearest approximation to the primitive truth of the Apostles in the Via Media) reverberated at the Second Vatican Council emerged when the Council initiated discussion on Newman’s signature project-- how to foster distinct identity and character of Catholic institutions of higher learning. The discussion generated by Vatican II and its quest for pristine Catholic character of Catholic education drew world-wide interest, particularly among experts, university presidents, and faculty and staff of Church related colleges and universities, until the authoritative Apostolic Constitution of John Paul II, Ex Corde Ecclesia (September 1990) supposedly brought the debate to an end. In spite of its positive reception, Ex Corde Ecclesia has not ended the contentious debate regarding the role and place of the hierarchy in Catholic institutions vis-à-vis academic inquiry and freedom of expression. The tension that continues to this day, it seems, stems from a varied understanding of two essential but troublesome concepts in the intellectual appeal of Catholicism: tradition and history. This paper attempts a resolution by employing “scissors-action” metaphor similar to the “scissors-action” metaphor that Lonergan made famous in Insight. Anecdotally, attention to the data of history is the upper blade and attention to the data of tradition (meaning) the lower blade. Put differently, Lonergan’s attention to historical consciousness is the upper blade and Newman’s Via Media that looks to ancient tradition and the wisdom of the Fathers is the lower blade. Thus I argue that the “scissors-action” metaphor not only clarifies the ambiguity between tradition and history but also offers constructive ways of understanding what and why of Catholic intellectual tradition (CIT).
