Twentieth-Century Religious Thought. By John Macquarrie. S.C.M. Press, London, 1963. Pp. 391. 40s.

1964 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 230-232
Author(s):  
Ninian Smart
Author(s):  
Ruth Coates

Chapter 2 sets out the history of the reception of deification in Russia in the long nineteenth century, drawing attention to the breadth and diversity of the theme’s manifestation, and pointing to the connections with inter-revolutionary religious thought. It examines how deification is understood variously in the spheres of monasticism, Orthodox institutions of higher education, and political culture. It identifies the novelist Fedor Dostoevsky and the philosopher Vladimir Soloviev as the most influential elite cultural expressions of the idea of deification, and the primary conduits through which Western European philosophical expressions of deification reach early twentieth-century Russian religious thought. Inspired by the anthropotheism of Feuerbach, and Stirner’s response to this, Dostoevsky brings to the fore the problem of illegitimate self-apotheosis, whilst Soloviev, in his philosophy of divine humanity, bequeaths deification to his successors both as this is understood by the church and in its iteration in German metaphysical idealism.


Author(s):  
Robert Bird

Viacheslav Ivanov was a leading theoretician of the symbolist literary movement and a prominent figure in the renaissance of religious thought in Russia at the turn of the twentieth century. A classical scholar by training, and erudite poet by vocation, Ivanov became known as an acolyte of Nietzsche. Later, along with the other ‘younger’ symbolists Aleksandr Blok and Andrei Belyi, Ivanov presented himself as a disciple of Vladimir Solov’ëv’s idealistic metaphysics and theurgic aesthetics. In the 1910s Ivanov achieved a proto-hermeneutic conception of art, which was the basis of his groundbreaking writings on Dostoevskii. After emigrating from the Soviet Union in 1924 Ivanov became a Roman Catholic and achieved some notoriety in Catholic intellectual circles between the wars. His powerful influence is evident in many contemporary and later thinkers in fields ranging from aesthetics and literary theory to philosophy and theology.


Author(s):  
Paul Valliere

This chapter canvasses the impact of Russian religious thought on major thinkers and movements in twentieth-century Protestantism and Roman Catholicism. Noting the unique role played by the Russian emigration that emerged in the West following the Russian Civil War (1918–1920), the chapter assesses the influence of Russian Orthodox thinkers on six streams of modern Western theology: Karl Barth and Evangelical theology, liberal Protestantism, Anglicanism, Yves Congar and early Roman Catholic ecumenism, nouvelle théologie and ressourcement, and liberation theology. The chapter argues that the most important venues of Russian influence on Western theology were the Ecumenical Movement and the Second Vatican Council. The most eminent English-speaking theologians to engage deeply with Russian Orthodox thought in the twentieth century were Jaroslav Pelikan and Rowan Williams. The chapter concludes by noting the passion for East/West unity that inspired the Russians and their Western Christian partners in the twentieth-century dialogue.


Author(s):  
David Fergusson

Three Scottish theologians contributed major works on Christology during the twentieth century. H. R. Mackintosh, Donald M. Baillie, and John Macquarrie belong to an Enlightenment tradition that was critical of Chalcedonianism while resolutely seeking to re-express its governing intention. While remaining in contact with the catholic traditions of the church, each sought to reinterpret these under the conditions of modernity. In doing so, their work manifests an intense devotional commitment to Jesus while simultaneously wrestling with problems that continue to beset contemporary articulations of Christ’s person and work. This chapter traces their work in context as it tackles problems of metaphysical entanglement, historical criticism of the gospels, and religious pluralism. Similarities and differences are considered, and the critical reception of their work is assessed.


1980 ◽  
Vol 33 (6) ◽  
pp. 533-549 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert Brown

Karl Barth's formidable attack on all forms of natural theology is one of the major events in twentieth-century religious thought. He anathematized every effort by unaided reason to conceive adequately of the nature of God or to demonstrate God's existence. To him all are disguised attempts to ‘domesticate’ God in the circumscribed and self-serving world of human interests. Those theologians who are dissatisfied with this dimension of Barth's thought sometimes criticize it, but more often find it easier just to ignore him and go their own ways. Those philosophers who are interested in provoking a confrontation with Barth find it difficult to penetrate the confessional circle and establish a point of contact which the defenders of Barth's prohibition of natural theology would themselves be constrained to acknowledge.My contention is that there is such a point of contact open to theological and philosophical critique, one which previous critics have overlooked. The argument is organized around five theses. They are:1. The foundation of Barth's position on God's knowability lies inChurch DogmaticsII, 1. Here he declares that God's noetic absoluteness derives from his ontic absoluteness (pp. 310f). To the critical eye this spurious derivation appears to be anon sequiturrather than an acceptable statement of logical entailment or of metaphysical or theological necessity.2. Barth fails to support the derivation with convincing exegetical arguments of the sort required to override its conceptual weakness. This is a rather surprising circumstance for one who strives to rest his entire theology on revelation.


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