Zygon®, 2014

Present knowledge of evolutionary history challenges traditional concepts of the Christian salvation history. In order to overcome these challenges, theology needs to articulate a wider, more open and more universal approach to the understanding of God's salvific action. One way of doing this is to employ the notion of "deep incarnation" suggested by Danish theologian Niels Henrik Gregersen. His suggestion may also blur the lines that mark a sharp distinction between the history of creation and the history of salvation, in a way that safeguards some of the basic tenets of classical theology.

Dr. Jason Fawcett, Rector of the Hebron Theological College, asked me to write this book as an introduction to the study of Christian history at his college. This project clearly required a study of the philosophical nature of Christian history to explain the underlying assumptions related with the subject. My aim is to teach theological students how to study ecclesiastical history. This is to cast the thought seeds that they may eventually become ecclesiastical historians. On one hand, the need to study church history is absolutely imperative: because, the growth of the various trends of Christianity is increasing; and, so, its study, understanding and recording is needed. There is a need to understand the characteristics of the various flows of actual Christianity as well as to make historical records of their local churches for later generations. Moreover, church history is essential to theological study; because, it provides an understanding of the historical framework of theological developments. Its study is also relevant because it measures the impact of diverse theological trends on church life and societies throughout history. It is a fundamental tool for any sound theological study. On the other hand, the study of ecclesiastical history is also needed for general history; because, it provides specialized data for the understanding of Western civilization. Furthermore, I believe the study of church history develops one’s capacity to understand the various ‘moves of God’. It will help to prepare ministerial hearts to be deeply prophetic to perceive God’s Ways and Ideas on the flow of history and its end.

2019

This essay offers a critical assessment of Dmitri Nikulin's effort to advance a theory of history that avoids the pitfalls of universalism, on the one hand, and historicism, on the other. I focus my attention upon the relationship between three key concepts in Nikulin's study; namely, the fabula, the historical, and logos. On my reading, Nikulin implicitly adopts an epistemological orientation, inherited from late nineteenth-century neo-Kantian philosophers who envisioned history as an object that must be thematized in order to be studied scientifically. As a result, Nikulin comes to characterize history in terms of an untenable schema/content dualism that almost entirely extricates the historical past (or, data) from the contemporary effort to understand (or, interpret) it. By contrasting Nikulin's view with those of Martin Heidegger and Hans-Georg Gadamer, I show that a hermeneutic conception of history offers a more convincing account of the dynamic relationship betwe...

2018

The Rauschenbush´s exposition in: The influence of Historical Studies on Theology has as a porpuse recovering the soul of the historical interpretation in the theological field. He starts remembering us that issues related with theological hermeneutics and history before the Reformation era were almost null, states that in the Middle Ages systematic theology inhabited the house and exegesis camped on the doorstep. .

Today there is a distinction, based on the work of several 19th century scholars, between what can be determined by the historical method and the dogmatic claims of the Church, described in shorthand as the Jesus of History and the Christ of Faith. This paper examines the genesis of this distinction by considering the work of Lessing, Strauss, and Harnack.

Between the Human and the Divine: Philosophical and …, 2002

2018

To see the Christian doctrine related with the Christian community throughout the historical theology, is more than an appreciation or a descriptive story, means to face the reality having in count an amazing mass of possibilities to dialogue with ancient beliefs as with contemporaries.

International Yearbook for Tillich Research, 2013

It is well known that Paul Tillich regarded history as essential to both his philosophy and theology, calling it "most important for my life and thought" 2 and devoting Part V of his Systematic Theology to the topic. I t particularly dominated his writing during the period following the Great War, which will be the focus of this essay. However, the issues raised arerelevant to all of Tillich's work. 3 This essay will also focus chiefly on Tillich's philosophy of history rather than his theology of history, although the two cannot always be kept separate. The chief question raised here will be whether Tillich's philosophy of history, despite its importance for his thought, was able to maintain a vital connection with empirical history. The relationship between the two in his work is ambivalent at best, and raises questions regarding the applicability of his philosophy of history to concrete historical situations. To undertake this investigation it will be necessary first to define the often troublesome terms history, historiography, philosophy of history, and empirical history, and then to locate Tillich's philosophy of history in its historical context. 4 This will be followed by an 1 The author wishes to thank his colleagues in the Department of Religion at Gustavus Adolphus College for their helpful suggestions for this article. He of course has complete responsibility for its contents. 2 P. Tillich, "Author's Introduction," The Protestant Era (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1948), p. xvii. 3 I will not, in particular, enter into the question whether his writings in the USA signify a shift in his interpretation of history, as discussed, e.g., in S. Lau, "From Historical Consciousness to Historical Action: A Study of Paul Tillich," Bijdragen, tijdschrjft voor filosofie en theologie 45 (1984), pp. 136-169. The question of dualism and the relationship to empirical history remains in any case. 4 Much, though not all, of this will rely heavily on the analysis of Ernst Troeltsch in Gesammelte Schriften 3. Der Historismus und seine Probleme. Erstes [Einziges] Buch. Das logische Problem der Geschichtsphilosophie. (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1922). Troeltsch is an important interlocutor for this paper, in part because Troeltsch achieved a clear statement of the problems of the philosophy of history, if not their solution, and in part because Tillich acknowledged Troeltsch's philosophy of history as highly significant for his own thought, both as a positive and negative influence. Tillich repeatedly acknowledged Troeltsch's contribution in having posed the right questions, but also having failed to answer them. He understood his own philosophy of history in part as an attempt to overcome the relativism of historicism (or what Troeltsch called "bad historicism.") For Tillich's appreciation and critique of Troeltsch, see "On The Boundary," in P. Tillich, The Interpretation of History

2005

2002

Naïve and overly simplistic appeals to the science of history support many faulty theological and liturgical claims. Indeed, the number of inane theological propositions and unbalanced liturgical trends that are ostensibly justified by invoking history are legion. Yet exactly what is being invoked, and how can the concerned Catholic navigate such claims? I propose that valuable aid can be found in what at first glance seems an unlikely source: postmodern philosophies of knowledge and methods of research (which have been around for over three decades now). First I will briefly set forth some postmodern insights into history. Second I will examine attempts to integrate theology with history that lack the more edifying elements of postmodern perspectives.

RSPT 98 (2014): 353-379

Draft translation by Dr. Matthew K. Minerd of Emmanuel Durand, "Note sur la théologie de l'histoire," RSPT 98 (2014): 353-379.

Modern Theology, 2025

As a historical communion irrevocably bound to a concrete past and yet open to God's ever-greater future, the Christian church is subject to certain cross-pressures: those of purity and totality; historical particularly and catholicity; permanence and assimilability; fidelity to "the faith once for all delivered" (Jude 1:3) and this faith's continued unfolding (John 16:12-13). While a recognition of these tensions in some form is as old as theology itself, many traditional means of negotiating or moderating them were destabilized, first by the Protestant Reformation, and then by the emergence of scientific, historical-critical research methodologies in the seventeenth century. Received narratives of doctrinal unanimity and continuity were newly contested; the contingency of the presumptively necessary and self-evident was unearthed; and anachronistic projections of present viewpoints onto past epochs were exposed. For many, Vincent of Lérins's oft-touted claim that the faith of the church is the faith which has been held "ubique, semper, et ab omnibus [everywhere, always, and by all]," along with the epistemic security and ecclesial authority resting thereupon, were imperiled. Thus, in his 1898 essay on "Historical and Dogmatic Method in Theology," Ernst Troeltsch could argue that-contrary to contemporary assumptions-history poses far weightier problems for Christian theology than does natural science. The past century and a half of Catholic theological and ecclesiastical history amply vindicates Troeltsch's contention. The fraught and fractious debates over history and theology first peaked in the Modernist controversy, and, although partially stymied by a series of magisterial interventions, resurfaced in the mid-twentieth century's vigorous debates over the "nouvelle théologie." An armistice of sorts was reached in Vatican II's restrained, underdeterminative, but nonetheless real appropriation of a more historically conscious ecclesial self-understanding. Granted, contemporary theological fragmentation and methodological pluralism indicate that disputes were not so much resolved through consensus as parties were freed to pursue diverse-and increasingly divergent-approaches. Those seeking principles by which to navigate these issues might benefit from consulting four recently published volumes on the nature of theology, truth, and tradition, with each offering its own approach to and assessment of the role of history in Christian theology. The Thomistic Response to the Nouvelle Théologie consists of heretofore untranslated mid-twentieth century essays from four Dominican theologians. These constitute the most prominent “Thomistic” interventions in the spirited intra-Catholic dialogue spurred by Jean Daniélou’s watershed 1946 article, “Les orientations présentes de la pensée religieuse” (often interpreted as the nouvelle théologie’s manifesto). Prima facie, the debates revolve around theological method and the perennial validity of Thomism, but a closer examination reveals that they derive from deeper epistemological and metaphysical differences regarding human and ecclesial access to fixed, supra-temporal truth within the vicissitudes of history. Writing eight decades later from a consonant theological vantage point, the authors in The Faith Once for All Delivered—keen as they are to unveil and delegitimize what they perceive to be a false and facile concordism with the Zeitgeist—frequently enact a similar reductio ad malum philosophae, most often to some form of historicism or subjectivism. In comparison, David Bentley Hart’s Tradition and Apocalypse radically reorients theological discourse on tradition by fundamentally contesting the premises of these two works. He counsels Christians to avert their gaze away from the past—if understood as the pristine source of tradition’s once-for-all content and its inviolate transmission and disclosure—and toward the eschatological horizon, in whose light and unexpected future alone tradition is rendered coherent. Lastly, Anne M. Carpenter’s Nothing Gained is Eternal approaches history as neither a hermeneutical hurdle nor an unblemished repository of Christian truth. Instead, history is the locus of the Christian tradition’s self-constituting action as a living, incarnate mediator of both truth and sin. Individually, each volume offers distinct characterizations, assessments, and proposals for grappling with questions pertaining to theology and history; collectively, insofar as their diagnoses and prescriptions vary, they illuminate certain contours of and cogent approaches to these enduring theological issues.

Changing Societies & Personalities, 2022

Review of the book by Priest M.V. Legeyev (2021). Bogoslovie istorii kak nauka. Metod. [Theology of history as a science. Method]. Sankt-Peterburgskaia Dukhovnaia Akademiia.

Thesis Eleven, 2013

This paper discusses attempts to think historicity in the work of the theologian Rudolf Bultmann and the German philosopher Hans Blumenberg. It then draws on the work of the Jesuit theologian Robert Doran in order to suggest how an historical pragmatics without historicism might be relevant to a future theology with social import.

New Narratives for Old: The Historical Method of Reading Early Christian Theology, 2022

Introduction to a Festschrift for Michel René Barnes dedicated to defining and illustrating the method of historical theology.

The Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 2017

2018

We have all gathered here in one place, in this society, in order to listen, more than anything else. To listen to what others have to say, to seek theological wisdom as we endeavour to reach beyond, indeed to cut through the layers of inherited tradition that have prevented those on whose shoulders we stand to fully grasp the consequences of their interpretive choices. Choices which, as we now see, have skewed our perspective on the ancient texts, misrepresented the other, and isolated us from those with whom we share responsibility for the wellbeing of creation. Choices, indeed, which have, for more than a millennium and a half, caused suffering on a scale that defies comprehension, culminating less than a century ago in Europe, in the core of what was considered the pinnacle of academic learning. As with prophets, the ability of theologies to unlock for people the enigmatic dimensions of life we call truth will be determined by the fruits they produce. The biblical texts, in all their complexities and embodied potential for projecting light or darkness, demand of us that we, condemned as we are to be free, choose; life above death, blessing above curse. And there is no choice without responsibility. A theology of responsibility cannot but respect denominational boundaries, but only beyond the abstract idea of boundary itself, as the absolute escapes the probing mind just as much as it instils humility. What is, then, the place of the biblical texts in theology, if theology relates to life as life relates to responsibility? What is the location of exegesis in the quest for a post-supersessionist theology?

2002

There is much to admire in this original and provocative attempt to formulate a way of doing theology at "the intersection of traditions." While Davaney can describe her project as "an argument for the appropriateness of pragmatic historicism as a mode of Christian theology" (x), her sights are set on the wider horizon of a "theology not confined to one given tradition" (xi). What she offers is a "trajectory" of thought cast forward with hope for the flourishing of human life in the twenty-first century. For that noble aim alone this book is to be highly commended. [2] Davaney's central achievement is to gather the various strands of current academic theology under a single comprehensive method, with a distinguishing label. It is a synthesis finely discriminated from its chief alternatives -the postliberalism of George Lindbeck and the revisionist theology of David Tracy -by being more generously inclusive of other traditions than the former and more rigorously critical of classical authority than the latter. As for deconstructive atheologians, such as Mark C. Taylor, she devotes only a footnote, dismissing the approach as asocial in its emphasis on subjectivity, as well as ahistorical in its scant attention to the past. (She does not apparently find the ironic surface of Las Vegas as glittering a model of postmodern existence as Taylor does.) [3] Although fully appreciative of the need for self-conscious theoretical construction, Davaney insists that a "full-bodied historicism" must also include the natural and social

2007

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