This reader brings together carefully selected material from a wide range of authors on the meani... more This reader brings together carefully selected material from a wide range of authors on the meaning and status of divine action. It samples the recent literature on providence, miracle, prayer and grace together with some relevant classical texts. Topics include locating God's action, images of divine control, human freedom in relation to providence and grace, the nature of and evidence of miracle, prayer and pain, answers to prayer, and the experience of grace.
The article argues for some much needed simplification of the episcopate, to shift resources to t... more The article argues for some much needed simplification of the episcopate, to shift resources to the ‘ground level’ and local communities, the ‘ordained’ clergy and other forms of ministry, especially the laity, who continue to disappear from the ‘Church’.
benefit by considering the empirical evidence. Whatever the logic of their position, do materiali... more benefit by considering the empirical evidence. Whatever the logic of their position, do materialists actually face death ‘without hope or love’ (p. 27)? Are they disoriented in their own body and life (p. 139)? Do they ‘hate matter’ (p. 146)? Phil Zuckerman’s Society Without God – an empirical sociological study of Europe’s most secular society (Denmark) – suggests not. With only one chapter informed by empirical social science, too many of the book’s arguments remain marooned in abstraction. Most readers will be less multidisciplinary than the book as a whole, so may find chapters outside their specialism tough going. But cross-disciplinary engagement is necessary if Christians are to find a distinctive voice in the contemporary social movement to reconsider life in the face of death – a movement which, curiously, only one chapter shows any awareness of.
This is one of the most terrifying and problematic parts of just one Gospel; it has a life of its... more This is one of the most terrifying and problematic parts of just one Gospel; it has a life of its own in culture. We are faced with the question of what place it may have within a Christian tradition and liturgical expression that has lost the sense of how the ‘raising of Lazarus’ might be read and praised as a text even in circumstances that seem too terrible to contemplate.
Kant went up to the Albertina at the age of sixteen in 1740, and his career as student there, tut... more Kant went up to the Albertina at the age of sixteen in 1740, and his career as student there, tutor to three families (the last being that of the Keyserlings) and back to the Albertina as a teacher, spanned the reigns of three kings in and of Prussia, through the near disasters and triumphs of Frederick the Great, and including the predatory partitions of Poland, but narrowly escaping the near collapse of Prussia in the Napoleonic wars. He had been saturated in the pietist tradition at home, at the Collegium Fridericianum, and in his student days. It has been alleged that pietism lingered on in Königsberg longer than elsewhere, not least because of the presence of Franz Albert Schultz, pupil of Francke and Wolff, army chaplain, pastor, school reformer and founder, settler of immigrants and university teacher, and of Martin Knutzen, a young and brilliant natural philosopher, and one of Kant’s most influential teachers at the Albertina. Kant never lost his respect for pietists at thei...
We read in a recent essay that ‘The love of God in Christ that … embraced sacrificai suffering is... more We read in a recent essay that ‘The love of God in Christ that … embraced sacrificai suffering is the pattern for the Christian. By incorporation “in Christ” he must continually seek more and more completely to reproduce it in his own life, and St. Paul believes that this can bring benefit to the Body of Christ which is the Church.’1 Flemington suggests that there are in our own time ‘some whose life and conduct force us to ask whether St. Paul’s conviction about the Cross of Christ may not give us the clue to the secret of this strange and baffling universe’. Lash approves of Flemington’s point by arguing that ‘Christian practice consists (by analogy with the practical interpretation of dramatic, legal and musical texts) in the performance or enactment of the biblical text: in its ‘“active reinterpretation”’.2 He is at pains to remind us that such a ‘faithful “rendering”’ of those matters to which the texts bear witness is frequently problematic. Flemington instances Maximilian Kolbe, whose story is well known even to those who have no concern with the categorisation of him as ‘blessed’ or ‘saint’. Elements in his story include the information that as a child he believed he was destined for martyrdom; that as a Franciscan, suffering from tuberculosis, he founded religious houses in Poland and Japan; that by the time he left Japan for the last time in 1936 he was tormented by headaches and abscesses brought on by eating food to which his body could not adapt itself; that in Auschwitz he took the place of another man picked out to die in the starvation cells in order to help the others destined to end their lives there to die; that as the last man of the group still alive after a fortnight he offered his arm, still praying, to the man who came to finish him off with a shot of carbolic acid.3
for missional reasons acquiesce in this evolution of an historic Christian ceremony. She also reh... more for missional reasons acquiesce in this evolution of an historic Christian ceremony. She also rehearses the debate as to whether the Church of England is here for the committed who finance and keep it going, or for the more nebulous group of people who identify with it but rarely attend. The concluding chapter has recommendations for the future. While the use of the service ‘Thanksgiving for the Gift of a Child’ as a ‘naming service’ is given consideration, the author’s heart seems to be with ‘christening’. Not to dismiss the word, but to welcome those who come with the expectations attached to it, building on the value they place on the social aspects of the ceremony, although they do not feature in the authorized liturgy, and remembering all the while that even asking for this rite is now a countercultural thing to do.
tinue to develop in the present differing traditions about what counts as theology and about the ... more tinue to develop in the present differing traditions about what counts as theology and about the intellectual tools with which theological differences can be productively reconciled. Here, as often in formal consultations and dialogues, there is displayed among Protestants a recurring movement toward concreteness, whether in the apprehension of Scripture or the analysis of social contexts, a preference among Catholic thinkers for the use and development of abstraction and theory, and a use by Orthodox thinkers of broad categories capable, for instance, of seeing icons and verbal texts within the same category of theological expression. Given these differing theological cultures, the difficulties of interpreting together both our present contexts and our common heritage are prodigious. The present work has made a serious, useful, and inviting entrance into this intellectually, culturally, and politically complicated problematic: the essays well demonstrate the problems, and the convergence text offers a coherent attempt at moving forward within the on-going F&O project. The volume should serve to encourage productive entrance of the broader theological community into this discussion. Through its claim that “hermeneutical reflection can serve as an aid in the process of recognizing the same faith underlying different practices” (147) and its appropriation of lex orandi, lex credendi methods of liturgical theology to broader ecumenical concerns, the present text opens fresh pathways for exploring together the ecumenical significance and implications of a variety of contentious historical shifts and divergent developments in practice and in ways of expressing the faith. One may hope, for instance, that future WCC F&O activity will draw together and deepen insights made available in the F&O paper on icons (no. 147) and the present volume. WCC F&O texts are intended to be accessible and useful simultaneously to professional theologians and general church audiences. This book could be used with advanced undergraduates as well as graduate students. It should be considered essential reading for ecumenists and deserves serious study and critical engagement within the broader field of theological hermeneutics.
This reader brings together carefully selected material from a wide range of authors on the meani... more This reader brings together carefully selected material from a wide range of authors on the meaning and status of divine action. It samples the recent literature on providence, miracle, prayer and grace together with some relevant classical texts. Topics include locating God's action, images of divine control, human freedom in relation to providence and grace, the nature of and evidence of miracle, prayer and pain, answers to prayer, and the experience of grace.
The article argues for some much needed simplification of the episcopate, to shift resources to t... more The article argues for some much needed simplification of the episcopate, to shift resources to the ‘ground level’ and local communities, the ‘ordained’ clergy and other forms of ministry, especially the laity, who continue to disappear from the ‘Church’.
benefit by considering the empirical evidence. Whatever the logic of their position, do materiali... more benefit by considering the empirical evidence. Whatever the logic of their position, do materialists actually face death ‘without hope or love’ (p. 27)? Are they disoriented in their own body and life (p. 139)? Do they ‘hate matter’ (p. 146)? Phil Zuckerman’s Society Without God – an empirical sociological study of Europe’s most secular society (Denmark) – suggests not. With only one chapter informed by empirical social science, too many of the book’s arguments remain marooned in abstraction. Most readers will be less multidisciplinary than the book as a whole, so may find chapters outside their specialism tough going. But cross-disciplinary engagement is necessary if Christians are to find a distinctive voice in the contemporary social movement to reconsider life in the face of death – a movement which, curiously, only one chapter shows any awareness of.
This is one of the most terrifying and problematic parts of just one Gospel; it has a life of its... more This is one of the most terrifying and problematic parts of just one Gospel; it has a life of its own in culture. We are faced with the question of what place it may have within a Christian tradition and liturgical expression that has lost the sense of how the ‘raising of Lazarus’ might be read and praised as a text even in circumstances that seem too terrible to contemplate.
Kant went up to the Albertina at the age of sixteen in 1740, and his career as student there, tut... more Kant went up to the Albertina at the age of sixteen in 1740, and his career as student there, tutor to three families (the last being that of the Keyserlings) and back to the Albertina as a teacher, spanned the reigns of three kings in and of Prussia, through the near disasters and triumphs of Frederick the Great, and including the predatory partitions of Poland, but narrowly escaping the near collapse of Prussia in the Napoleonic wars. He had been saturated in the pietist tradition at home, at the Collegium Fridericianum, and in his student days. It has been alleged that pietism lingered on in Königsberg longer than elsewhere, not least because of the presence of Franz Albert Schultz, pupil of Francke and Wolff, army chaplain, pastor, school reformer and founder, settler of immigrants and university teacher, and of Martin Knutzen, a young and brilliant natural philosopher, and one of Kant’s most influential teachers at the Albertina. Kant never lost his respect for pietists at thei...
We read in a recent essay that ‘The love of God in Christ that … embraced sacrificai suffering is... more We read in a recent essay that ‘The love of God in Christ that … embraced sacrificai suffering is the pattern for the Christian. By incorporation “in Christ” he must continually seek more and more completely to reproduce it in his own life, and St. Paul believes that this can bring benefit to the Body of Christ which is the Church.’1 Flemington suggests that there are in our own time ‘some whose life and conduct force us to ask whether St. Paul’s conviction about the Cross of Christ may not give us the clue to the secret of this strange and baffling universe’. Lash approves of Flemington’s point by arguing that ‘Christian practice consists (by analogy with the practical interpretation of dramatic, legal and musical texts) in the performance or enactment of the biblical text: in its ‘“active reinterpretation”’.2 He is at pains to remind us that such a ‘faithful “rendering”’ of those matters to which the texts bear witness is frequently problematic. Flemington instances Maximilian Kolbe, whose story is well known even to those who have no concern with the categorisation of him as ‘blessed’ or ‘saint’. Elements in his story include the information that as a child he believed he was destined for martyrdom; that as a Franciscan, suffering from tuberculosis, he founded religious houses in Poland and Japan; that by the time he left Japan for the last time in 1936 he was tormented by headaches and abscesses brought on by eating food to which his body could not adapt itself; that in Auschwitz he took the place of another man picked out to die in the starvation cells in order to help the others destined to end their lives there to die; that as the last man of the group still alive after a fortnight he offered his arm, still praying, to the man who came to finish him off with a shot of carbolic acid.3
for missional reasons acquiesce in this evolution of an historic Christian ceremony. She also reh... more for missional reasons acquiesce in this evolution of an historic Christian ceremony. She also rehearses the debate as to whether the Church of England is here for the committed who finance and keep it going, or for the more nebulous group of people who identify with it but rarely attend. The concluding chapter has recommendations for the future. While the use of the service ‘Thanksgiving for the Gift of a Child’ as a ‘naming service’ is given consideration, the author’s heart seems to be with ‘christening’. Not to dismiss the word, but to welcome those who come with the expectations attached to it, building on the value they place on the social aspects of the ceremony, although they do not feature in the authorized liturgy, and remembering all the while that even asking for this rite is now a countercultural thing to do.
tinue to develop in the present differing traditions about what counts as theology and about the ... more tinue to develop in the present differing traditions about what counts as theology and about the intellectual tools with which theological differences can be productively reconciled. Here, as often in formal consultations and dialogues, there is displayed among Protestants a recurring movement toward concreteness, whether in the apprehension of Scripture or the analysis of social contexts, a preference among Catholic thinkers for the use and development of abstraction and theory, and a use by Orthodox thinkers of broad categories capable, for instance, of seeing icons and verbal texts within the same category of theological expression. Given these differing theological cultures, the difficulties of interpreting together both our present contexts and our common heritage are prodigious. The present work has made a serious, useful, and inviting entrance into this intellectually, culturally, and politically complicated problematic: the essays well demonstrate the problems, and the convergence text offers a coherent attempt at moving forward within the on-going F&O project. The volume should serve to encourage productive entrance of the broader theological community into this discussion. Through its claim that “hermeneutical reflection can serve as an aid in the process of recognizing the same faith underlying different practices” (147) and its appropriation of lex orandi, lex credendi methods of liturgical theology to broader ecumenical concerns, the present text opens fresh pathways for exploring together the ecumenical significance and implications of a variety of contentious historical shifts and divergent developments in practice and in ways of expressing the faith. One may hope, for instance, that future WCC F&O activity will draw together and deepen insights made available in the F&O paper on icons (no. 147) and the present volume. WCC F&O texts are intended to be accessible and useful simultaneously to professional theologians and general church audiences. This book could be used with advanced undergraduates as well as graduate students. It should be considered essential reading for ecumenists and deserves serious study and critical engagement within the broader field of theological hermeneutics.
Uploads
Papers by Ann Loades